the salary arrived. so did the sinkhole.

It is Friday, May 15th, 2026.

Five days since I wrote that all roads lead to rot, and unfortunately, the road has not developed better civic planning since then. It is still the same road, same potholes, same suspicious corner, same emotional drainage system clogged with old leaves, shame, salt, and things I should have said in 2017, 2019, 2021, yesterday, this afternoon, ten minutes ago. I would like to report progress, but progress has not submitted its attendance. Maybe it took casual leave, or maybe it resigned or maybe it saw my life and said, respectfully, madam, this department is beyond my jurisdiction. 

Monday began with a training. Technically, my manager was supposed to take it while I assisted her. Technically, I had prepared everything for her. Technically, I had even pushed her on Saturday to prepare, like a fool with hope and basic professional ethics. She did not. Then Sunday night, while I was busy being poor in the quiet and dark, she sent two texts asking me to join early on Monday to help her out. Help her out. Haha. A phrase so small, so polite, so corporate-y, it should come with its own knife. Monday arrived. Like, always. She started the session, and then, with the grace of someone dropping a dead animal at my feet, very conveniently dumped the whole thing on me. Not last minute. Worse. After the minute had already passed. After the train had left. After the public performance had begun and I was standing there with no rehearsal, no consent, and no escape hatch. And then it continued. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Three days of taking a training I had not agreed to lead. Three days of smiling into the camera, arranging knowledge into digestible portions, pretending surprise labour is the same thing as opportunity. Three days of doing everything. There is a special violence in being competent. People discover you can carry weight, and suddenly the weight becomes yours by tradition. Meanwhile, over the past weekend, my salary had not come. Sunday passed like a badly written insult. The banks, displaying their usual talent for comedy without compassion, debited whatever peanuts I had left as a penalty for low balance. Low balance. The account was hungry, so they fined it for being hungry. What a cruel joke. No, not joke. Joke implies timing. This was just cruel capitalism wearing a clown nose and holding a receipt. Then finally, Monday night, after a long day of unconsensual labour, I saw the money had been credited from my organisation. For one stupid second, I felt relief. A small animal lifting its head. Haha. Immediately, the utility bills marched in like creditors at a funeral. Paid. Paid. Paid. The salary arrived and was swallowed before I could even pretend to be a person with options. Now I do not know what to do with the remaining peanuts. Save them? Spend them? Worship them? Put them under a glass case and label them: Evidence of Almost Freedom? Money does this ugly thing where it becomes both survival and accusation. If I save, I am responsible. If I spend, I am reckless. If I buy one harmless thing, the future clears its throat. If I deny myself everything, the present sits in the corner and rots.¹ So here I am, financially adult and emotionally feral, wondering whether peanuts should become savings, food, joy, phone case, emergency fund, retirement fund, temporarily-escape-from-family fund, abandon-my-family fun or proof that I am still allowed to want. And because the universe enjoys garnish, Thursday started with a multi-team meeting. The three-day training was finally over. My face had done its professional smiling. My voice had carried three days of material it was never supposed to carry. My brain was sitting in the corner like a wet towel. Then our director thanked my manager for working so hard and taking the training. Ha. Cute. Cruel cherry on top. There she was, being publicly blessed for labour that had passed through my throat, my screen, my panic, my preparation, my improvisation, my body, my mind, my hands. I watched credit climb the hierarchy like a well-trained monkey. Nobody thanked me. Of course nobody thanked me. What was I thinking? That would have disturbed the seating arrangement of the universe. The senior must shine. The junior must become (un)human infrastructure. The work must appear from somewhere, like office electricity or women’s patience. This is the social work's corporate version of domestic labour: invisible until it fails, inherited when inconvenient, credited to someone else when successful. I wish I could say I was surprised. I was not. That is what made it worse.

Anyway. Because the mind is a strange animal and refuses to suffer in a straight line, Wednesday night I returned to The Law According to Lidia Poët. The trainings were over. The emails had documented their little theatre of stolen credit. My body was tired in that corporate-social-work way where even the bones seem to have attended calls. Finally, I had a little time to myself. So naturally, I used it to become unreasonable about a fictional prosecutor. Jacopo? No. The prosecutor. Pier. Pierluigi Fourneau. Or, as Lidia called him as her "Young Warner". Or her schnauzel. The prosecutor had me hooked. There is something very annoying about being hooked. It makes a fool of all your intellectual furniture. Suddenly I am not a woman with critical faculties. I am a Victorian fainting couch with internet access. I went researching him. Then I watched two of his other films² that night, like a person conducting scholarly work and absolutely not like a woman chasing the aftertaste of one very specific chemistry. The films had charm. They had their own mood, their own appeal, their own little atmosphere. For a while, they worked. Then the spell thinned. Whatever spark I was trying to follow was not really there. Because it was not only him, was it? That is the irritating truth. It was not only the face, the voice, the posture, the period clothing, the courtroom seriousness, the restrained longing doing its quiet damage. It was the charge between them. The particular weather created when Lidia and the prosecutor stand near each other and do not say the actual thing. That has stayed. It has stayed so stubbornly that I keep rewatching their scenes. Again and again. Night and day. Day and night. Like a devotional practice, except the temple is Netflix and the deity is unbearable romantic tension. By now, I know the scenes too well. The dialogues. The pauses. The facial expressions. The music entering at exactly the wrong-right moment. The way one look shifts the entire emotional furniture of a scene. The way a sentence becomes less important than the breath before it. The way restraint can sometimes feel more intimate than touch. The kisses. The looks and smiles. Every rewatch gives me something else. A detail I missed. A change in expression. A hesitation. A small cruelty. A softness pretending to be wit. A look that arrives half a second too late. A silence that does not know how to leave the room. And, yes, the giddy pleasure. The ridiculous private sparkle of it. I know it is fiction. I know it is choreography. I know there are writers, actors, lighting, music, editing, all the machinery of feeling doing its work behind the curtain. I know I am being handled. I can see the strings. Still, I keep offering my wrists. There is something almost embarrassing about how deeply a fictional almost-love can enter the bloodstream. Maybe because it is safe. Maybe because it asks nothing from me. Maybe because nobody in my actual life is looking at me like that... with recognition, challenge, danger, tenderness, and the terrible inconvenience of wanting. Maybe I latch onto shows because they give me scenes my life refuses to stage. In Lidia Poët, even longing has architecture. It has corridors, offices, courtrooms, gloves, lamps, carriage rides, glances. It gets music. It gets dialogue. It gets a face across the room. My longing gets browser tabs. My longing gets a broken phone case. My longing gets me, sitting here after midnight, memorising someone else’s charged silences because my own life has made desire both dangerous and impractical. And yet, I do not want to mock it too much. This tiny obsession has kept me company. It has given my tired brain somewhere beautiful to go. It has reminded me that I am still capable of being moved, charmed, struck, made foolish, made awake. That some part of me still responds to spark. Still recognises chemistry. Still wants the look, the scene, the music, the impossible almost. Maybe that is why it has not faded yet. The other films were charming, yes. But charm is not the same as haunting. Charm passes through the room. Haunting learns your name.

But the trouble with haunting is that it does not stay politely inside the show. It follows me out. At first, it feels harmless. Sweet, even. A little private theatre behind the ribs. A spark. A charged scene to revisit when the actual day has been all training, bills, stolen credit, and corporate digestion. The brain says: here, look, beauty. Look, tension. Look, someone wanting someone with their whole face while pretending not to. And then, quietly, the floor changes. The giddiness starts to rot at the edges. I know this pattern. I know it too well. The attachment begins as pleasure, then turns into comparison, then into lack, then into a pit with excellent acoustics. Suddenly I am not watching a romance. I am standing outside my own life, watching what it does not contain. No one looks at me like that. No one waits for me in a corridor of consequence. No one turns toward me with restrained disaster in their eyes. No one writes my longing into music. By MDD, I mean both things, because of course my brain could not stop at one acronym. Major Depressive Disorder, yes, the official beast with paperwork. But also Maladaptive Daydreaming, its glittering cousin, the one that does not drag me down so much as decorate the pit and invite me to live there. The daydreaming does not feel like imagination then. It feels like teleportation-relocation. One minute I am in my room, and the next I am living inside a scene that has better lighting, better dialogue, better stakes, better tenderness. I build corridors from glances. I extend conversations that never happened. I replay a look until it becomes a country. And for a while, the body loosens its grip. The real world thins. My actual life goes quiet in the background like a tab I forgot to close. That is where the DPDR slips in. Depersonalization-derealization disorder. Not as a separate disaster, but as the bill for leaving too often. The more inhabited the daydream becomes, the less inhabited I feel in my own body. My hands become props. My room becomes set design. My face becomes a character I vaguely recognise but do not fully own. The fictional world gains texture, and my real world loses temperature. And then the MDD, that old bureaucrat of the soul, opens its files. It begins gently, almost reasonably. See? This is what life can look like. This is what desire can do to a face. This is what aliveness looks like when properly lit. And now look at you. Look at your room. Look at your unread messages. Look at your body. Look at the broken phone case. Look at the salary that arrived only to vanish into bills. Look at the Saturday already being trespassed upon by work. Look at the years. Look at the stuckness. Look at the absence. Depression has never needed originality. Repetition is its main skill. Then the DPDR enters like bad fog. The world gets a pane of glass over it. My own hands become slightly theoretical. My face in the mirror looks like someone I have been assigned to maintain. The room becomes too flat and too far away at the same time. I can hear myself thinking, but from another room. I can move, answer, type, drink water, exist, but existence feels like a badly dubbed film. And the show becomes more real than me. That is the humiliating part. A fictional almost-touch has more texture than my actual evening. A glance between two actors feels more inhabited than my own body. Their silence has gravity. Mine has dust. Their longing has editing, music, consequence. Mine has tabs open and a mild headache. So I keep rewatching, partly for pleasure, partly for proof. Proof that I can still feel. Proof that somewhere inside the fog, the signal has not died. But every proof becomes evidence against me. If I can feel this much for a scene, why can I not feel properly inside my own life? If my chest can tighten because two fictional people stood too close under warm lighting, why does my actual future feel wrapped in plastic? If desire still lives in me, why does it have nowhere to go except a screen? This is how the sinkhole opens. Not dramatically. Not with a scream. Just one more rewatch. One more scene. One more detail noticed. One more minute of being pulled toward a life with movement, stakes, beauty, and someone across the room who sees you as both problem and possibility. Then I pause the show. And my own room returns. My own life returns. The same arrangement. The same stuck furniture of the self. The same body I keep trying to inhabit like rented accommodation. The same old fear standing at the foot of the bed, asking if I enjoyed my little outing. This is why I both love and fear these attachments. They rescue me. Then they show me what I needed rescuing from. They make me feel alive. Then they make my life feel unlivable. They pull me out of numbness. Then leave me with the full bill of having been numb. And I know this sounds excessive. I know sane people watch a show, enjoy the chemistry, maybe make an edit, maybe send a thirsty message to a friend, then proceed with their lives like emotionally regulated mammals. I, meanwhile, open one fictional door and fall through the architecture of my entire deprivation. Very normal. Very casual. Five stars. Would dissociate again. I do not escape reality. No. Never. I just return to it less assembled.

Anyway. The phone case is still broken. Of course it is. It has become one of those stupidly faithful objects that stays because I do not have the courage to replace it with something honest. A cracked little witness that's ugly, loyal, safer than confession. I keep thinking about the sapphic flag phone case, still. Not constantly, not dramatically, not like a heroine pressing a forbidden letter to her chest under moonlight. More like an app running quietly in the background, draining battery. A small wish. A small colour. A small yes I keep refusing myself because in this house where I reside, even colour can become evidence. A phone case is never just a phone case. It is a trial waiting for a prosecutor.³ Who bought this? Why this colour? What does it mean? Where did you see this? Who told you? Why are you becoming like this? Since when? Because families are very modern until your object begins to speak a language they did not approve. Then suddenly everyone becomes archaeologist, police, priest, and unpaid detective. So the broken cover stays. The safe thing. The ugly thing. The thing that says nothing and therefore survives. Just like me. I am ugly and I say nothing. And, unfortunately, I survive. I wish I were less good at surviving. This is a terrible thing to say because survival is supposed to be noble. Women are fed this word like jaggery wrapped around medicine. Survive. Adjust. Manage. Endure. Be strong. Be mature. Be practical. Be grateful it is not worse. Be glad you are educated. Be glad you have work. Be glad nobody has chained your ankle to the bedpost. Be glad the cage has wonky Wi-Fi that doesn't work only for you so you have to buy your data separately. And I am glad, sometimes. I am not completely foolish, you know. I know the world is brutal, and I know there are worse rooms, worse fathers, worse mothers, worse brothers, worse sisters, worse uncles, worse aunts, worse silences, worse locks, worse oppressors. And, I know comparison is the national sport of emotional invalidation. Still, knowing other people are drowning in deeper water does not make your own lungs decorative. I am tired. Not beautifully tired. Not aesthetically tired. Not poet tired. Not the cinematic kind where a woman removes one earring and looks devastating under yellow light. I am tired in the spreadsheet way. Rows and rows of small unfinished things. Cells filled with pending. Useless colours marking them pending. Body pending. Courage pending. Departure pending. Desire pending. Honesty pending. Future pending. Life pending. There is something obscene about being mid-twenty-something and feeling already archival. Like I am not living, have never lived, but only preserving evidence for a case no court will ever hear. 
Exhibit A: the broken phone case.
Exhibit B: the body that alternates between hunger and punishment of embarrassment when I do eat.⁴
Exhibit C: the tabs I keep open as if research can become rescue.
Exhibit D: the private list of things I will do when I leave.
Exhibit E: the sentence, when I leave, carrying the entire weight of a religion.⁵
But what if I do not leave? There it is. The honest rot laid bare under the decorative moss. What if I do not leave? What if the box of things I will do when I leave becomes a pathetic, loser museum of the woman I kept postponing? What if all my rebellion remains beautifully theoretical, well-written, occasionally funny, and completely unusable in this stupid head of mine and a copy of it here, in this weird little corner of the world wide web? What if I keep becoming more articulate about the cage and never actually become less caged? I hate that question because it has no manners and it shamelessly enters without knocking and sits on my bed. Today was not even dramatic enough to justify all this. That is the insult. Nothing happened. No grand fight. No cinematic breakdown. No one said the cruel line that would make a clean villain of them. The day simply passed over me with its usual dull hands. Work, phone, food thoughts, body thoughts, tabs, messages, heat, humidity, perpetual fatigue, my mother's devotional songs, the faint humiliation of still being myself in this rotting flesh. Maybe that is why I am writing. Like always. Because nothing happened, and still I feel like I survived something tremendous. Maybe the event is not always external. Maybe sometimes the event is waking up inside the same life and not immediately turning into stone. I keep thinking of Lidia Poët again. Not just the law, the fight, the forbidden rooms. Of course, that is the central point, though. I keep thinking of her forward motion. Even when she suffers, the story lets her move. Or, more aptly, she moves her story forward. She enters rooms, she argues, she demands, she fights, she risks, she desires, she loves, she fails with choreography, and she still continues. Her world resists her, yes, on this screen, it gives her scenes. My life, by comparison, feels like a loading screen. A buffering woman. A spinning circle wearing moisturizer. 

And yet, beneath all this melodrama, some tiny stubborn thing remains alive. Annoyingly alive. Cockroach alive. Government-office-file alive. It keeps making lists. It keeps saving poems. It keeps laughing at terrible jokes all alone in the small, dark room. It keeps wanting pizza, sea air, impossible softness, a room with a lock, a body that is not treated like a public institution, a love that does not require a courtroom, and one ridiculous phone case in colours nobody is allowed to interrogate. This, I suppose, is hope...? Not the clean kind. Definitely, not. Not the motivational-poster kind, either. Not the “everything happens for a reason” kind, which should be banned and replaced with free snacks. My hope is smaller and more suspicious. It looks like keeping the browser tab open. It looks like drinking water after punishing the body. It looks like writing the sentence even when the sentence is ugly. It looks like admitting I want things. It looks like not mocking myself immediately after admitting I want things. Okay, fine, it looks like mocking myself only a little. At 20:55 PM, I am still here. Still stuck. Still carrying home inside me like contraband. Still afraid that my life is not a phase but the whole arrangement. Still saving possible selves in invisible carts. Still not buying the phone case. Still wanting it. Maybe that matters. I hope, it matters. Wanting. Even wanting badly. Even wanting secretly. Even wanting in a house where desire must learn to move like a shameful thief. Rot is still here, yes. But maybe rot is not the only thing loyal to me. Maybe want is loyal too. Maybe the little sapphic flag in my head, the one I have not bought, the one I have not allowed to become plastic and visible and stupidly real, is not only fear. Maybe it is also proof that some part of me still knows colour. Still recognises itself. Still presses its face against the shop window of the future and says, very quietly, not yet, but mine. Not yet. But mine.

As I write this, she, my manager, has texted again. After work hours, of course. Respecting time would be too vulgar, too modern, too dangerously close to recognising me as a person. Some work needs to be done ASAP. As she had already promised it. Naturally. ASAP: the social work's corporate mantra of poor planning, passed down from one panicked person [usually the manager] to another [the underdog] until it lands in the lap of whoever [mostly, the underdog, again] has the least authority to refuse. The funny part is, it is not even my job. Not really. But somehow the inconvenience has found my address. Now I will have to either ask the concerned person humiliatingly late at night, as if I am the villain in their Friday, or ask tomorrow, on an off Saturday, and become the tiny unpleasant notification in someone else’s weekend. This is how bad management spreads its shame. Someone does not plan. Someone does not prepare. Someone does not communicate. Then the failure travels downward, wearing urgency as perfume the gives you a migraine the moment it hits your nostrils, until the most junior person is left holding a burning plate and apologising for the smoke. I hate this part most: the forced borrowing of another person’s time. I hate that I must become the messenger of someone else’s chaos. I hate that I must sound polite while carrying a request I do not respect. I hate that my options are either to inconvenience someone else or absorb the inconvenience into my own body, which is apparently where all unclaimed work goes to die. There should be a word for this. Not burnout. Burnout sounds too final, too respectable, like a candle in a poem. This is more like being nibbled. Tiny bites of time. Tiny bites of rest. Tiny bites of Friday evening, Saturday morning, salary, self-respect, appetite, softness, desire. Nothing large enough to make a case. Everything small enough to be dismissed. Just do this once. Just check once. Just ask once. Just join early once. Just help out once. Just manage for today. Just stretch a little. A whole life can be stolen in “just.” And I know what will happen if I say no. Maybe nothing dramatic. Maybe no punishment anyone can screenshot. Just a change in tone. A slight coolness. A note in the invisible ledger. Not a team player. Not proactive. Difficult. Uncooperative. Needs attitude adjustment. The old words wearing office clothes. So I sit here, at 23:25 PM, writing about being stuck while the proof of stuckness arrives in real time. A message on my phone. A task outside my role. An urgency I did not create. A Saturday being quietly dragged toward sacrifice. And me, still deciding whether to obey, delay, soften, apologise, resist, or perform that sophisticated modern dance called “setting boundaries” while standing on a floor made entirely of consequences. Maybe I will reply tomorrow [that being, Monday]. Maybe I will say, “I’ll check this during working hours.” Maybe I will type it bravely and then stare at it like it is a bomb and then erase it. Maybe courage, for tonight, is not sending the message immediately. Maybe survival is letting one ASAP remain slightly less ASAP. Maybe rebellion begins as a notification left unread. Actually, I read it. Or maybe I am romanticising avoidance because I am tired. Both can be true. Most things that keep me alive are morally untidy.

~ Oizys.

¹ This too echoes: “The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.” ― Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
² The Mascarpone Collection.
³ Good reference.
⁴ An addendum for Exhibit B: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.
⁵ An addendum for Exhibit E:
When I leave, I will buy the phone case.
When I leave, I will breathe normally.
When I leave, I will decorate myself without fear.
When I leave, I will not explain every harmless thing like it is a crime scene.
When I leave, I will become the version of myself who exists without whispering.

Can I Teen At Twenty-Three?

The most reminiscing memory from my childhood was quietness. Non-existence of individuality. Remain similar to the crowd. Appear same as everyone. Ambiguity and questionings were a luxury. You don’t explore. You follow instructions. Once you start falling into set into instructions, you become quiet. Your mind is quiet. Because, you body just follows a set of rules. You stop thinking. No noise at all. No movements. 

I used to wonder, as I slowly shifted from a child into a something I couldn’t quite define, when did quietness become a state of being? When did silence move from being something external, something that belonged to the world around me, to something internal, something I had learned to carry with me like an old coat that I forgot was once too big, but now fits too snugly? Was this growth? Or just another rule added to the ever-growing list of instructions?

Somewhere along the line, the novelty of questions turned into an inconvenience. Curiosity was frowned upon because it didn’t fit the model. Why ask when you can just follow? The quietness seeped deeper, turning the mind into a kind of blank canvas, but without any paint, without any color. It wasn’t freedom. It was a vacuum. A stillness that meant you weren’t bothering anyone or, more honestly, yourself.

But then I turned twenty-three. And nothing changed. I was still a kind of ghost walking through life, only the noises I made didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. The whispers of uncertainty I had in childhood had somehow become the only thing I could hear. How strange, how bitterly odd it was to realize that the noise I had avoided all those years wasn’t some unwelcome disturbance. It was a part of me. The questions I had once ignored in favor of calm were now the only things left that felt real. And yet, no one seemed to want to answer them.

Am I supposed to “know” by now? Or am I just allowed to drift, be like the others, blend in, because nobody really expects much of twenty-three? Is this the time to find the perfect voice, the perfect job, the perfect relationship—because that’s what everyone says? The older I get, the less I’m sure. And yet, I still follow the rules. The noise still rings, but it’s not clear whether it’s my own or just the static of the world around me.

What does it mean to find yourself when you’ve been told for so long to stay quiet and still? Is the search for “individuality” just another set of instructions in disguise? The irony hits me sometimes: I spend so much time trying to figure out who I am, but perhaps I’m not supposed to figure it out at all. Maybe it's all just meant to be a constant question, without a neat, satisfying conclusion.

The funny thing is, I can see the outlines of others, living their lives in such defined ways, yet still, I feel... not like them. But, do I really feel? Or am I just playing another role, as I've been taught, just playing quiet like everyone else? The “how-to” manuals seem so appealing at first—until you realize they don’t actually tell you anything. They just offer illusions. Do I really believe them? Or do I just want to?

So here I am, twenty-three, still tangled in the same threads I was at ten. The same whispers. The same questions. Maybe I was meant to make peace with not knowing. But can you truly be at peace with a question you’re afraid to ask? I don’t know. I don’t even know if the asking will make a difference anymore. But maybe that’s the answer.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I’ll figure it out by twenty-four. Or maybe I’ll still be just as silent, just as confused, like a piece of quiet in a loud room, wondering if it’ll ever matter.

So, here I am, approaching twenty-four, and still trapped in the same perpetual spin of confusion. It’s almost like I’m stuck in an infinite loop of trying to “get it,” trying to feel like I’m doing life correctly, yet no matter how many times I rerun the script, I end up in the same place: wondering if I’m even supposed to have it figured out.

I hear all these stories from people around me—about their careers, their relationships, their plans—and it sounds so... certain. They talk like they know, and maybe they do. Maybe they’ve cracked it. Maybe they have it all neatly packaged in a box that says “THIS IS YOUR LIFE, AND IT MAKES SENSE.” I think that's the dream. A life that feels like a straight line, instead of this perpetual zigzag I seem to be caught in. There’s this pressure to be ‘on the way’ somewhere, anywhere, but every time I try to follow that invisible arrow pointing me forward, I end up on some detour I didn’t sign up for. Not bad, not good, just... not where I thought I would be. And then I wonder: am I the only one on the detour? Or are we all just pretending we’ve found the main road?

Because the truth is, when I look around, I don’t see a lot of people walking with that clarity of purpose. Sure, they talk about it—loudly, confidently, as if they know the map. But isn’t it strange how so many people still feel off in their own ways? Some are just better at keeping the facade up. Isn’t that what life is, though? A masquerade ball of people with well-rehearsed routines, dancing to some invisible beat? And then I wonder if I’m the only one without rhythm. Am I missing something everyone else already figured out? Or maybe I’ve just been listening to the wrong song.

It feels like you’re supposed to have this idea of what the future holds, but every time I try to grab it, it slips right through my fingers, like smoke. All these “answers” are supposed to be coming at me, right? But they’re more like sparks of light in the distance—glimmering but too far to touch. What’s the deal with everyone else being so sure about what comes next? It’s like I missed a memo. Was I supposed to be set at twenty-three? Was I supposed to wake up one morning with this magical sense of direction, this wild confidence in who I am and where I’m going? The truth is, I feel more like I’m just sort of there, wandering through the days, listening to the sound of my own footsteps and wondering if they even matter.

There’s always this background hum, a low drone of pressure, whether it’s from friends, family, or society, telling me to get it together, to become someone. They say “You’re in your prime,” but is that just another way of saying “You should be living your best life right now, and anything less than that is failure”? They call it the “defining years,” as if twenty-three is some magical threshold where everything clicks into place. So why does it feel like I’m not even close to figuring out the basics?

I try not to let it get to me, the way everyone talks about their successes and their carefully curated “perfect” moments. It’s hard to keep up with the illusion when all I feel is the disconnect between what I’m supposed to feel and what I actually feel. And it’s not like I’m unhappy. It’s just that the whole “find yourself” thing seems so... stale. Like a bad perfume that’s been lingering in the air for too long. Everyone keeps talking about being “authentic,” but when you try to be authentic, it’s almost like you’re stepping on someone else’s toes. Is authenticity just another trend now? Is being true to yourself the latest thing that’s been packaged and sold to the masses?

So, I walk around with these questions, quietly asking them to myself, and they feel so personal, but at the same time, they feel so universal. Maybe we’re all supposed to be asking these questions. Maybe that’s the key. To always be in search of some truth that doesn’t exist, or at least, that we don’t get to find neatly packaged with a bow. I think there’s freedom in that—freedom in the question itself. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? To live in the question without trying to demand an answer.

And so I linger, in this perpetual in-between, where the clock ticks, but the hours seem irrelevant. It's funny how everyone around me moves forward—marching with the beat of some invisible drum, their steps measured and sure. They talk in a language of “plans,” of “achievements,” of “next steps,” and I’m left translating, wondering if I even speak the same dialect. They tell me I’m still young, that I have time, but the ticking feels louder now. Not like a countdown, but like a reminder. A reminder that time is always moving, even if I feel stuck, suspended in this weird, uncomfortable pause.

Sometimes, I think about those stories we tell ourselves about how life is supposed to unfold. The ones where the heroes know exactly who they are, and their journey is a straight line, a path to follow with milestones clearly marked. The kind of life we see on Instagram, in movies, in those “dreams” we’re sold. But the reality is... that path doesn’t exist. There are no clear markers, no definite signs. Just a lot of wandering, a lot of guesswork, a lot of seeing something on the horizon and chasing it, only to find it’s not what you thought it was.

Maybe that’s the trick, though. Maybe the journey isn’t about finding the destination but about figuring out that there is no destination. The funny part is, I don’t know if I actually believe that. I want to, but it feels too abstract. Too... unsatisfying, almost. To think there’s no finish line, no neat bow to tie it all up. But still, there’s a part of me that wonders—what if that’s where the freedom lies? In the nothingness? In the acceptance that we’re always going to be unsure? I can hear the voices of everyone around me telling me to get my act together, to stop wandering, to “settle down,” to make decisions. But every time I try to latch onto something, I feel it slip away. Every decision feels like a gamble, and I’m getting tired of playing games I didn’t even sign up for.

You can’t talk about uncertainty without talking about the constant pressure to have it figured out, though. That’s the real weight. It’s not the quietness, not the questions. It’s the way everyone’s asking when you’re going to get serious, when you’re going to have that “aha” moment. Like there's this expectation that twenty-three should be the year of clarity. And I keep asking myself, why? Why twenty-three? What’s so magical about that number? Maybe it’s the number that feels just old enough to be mature, but still young enough to be forgiven for not knowing. But the truth is, I don’t feel older. I don’t feel more “mature.” I feel like I’m in some kind of paradoxical state where I’m both too old and not old enough to make sense of it all.

And then there’s the idea of “success.” Everyone seems to have it mapped out—family, career, house, relationship. And I’m just here, sitting on the sidelines, wondering if I missed a class. I didn’t get the memo about how to tie all the pieces together. They’re all talking about their “accomplishments,” their “plans,” their “next big move,” and I can’t help but wonder, do they really have it all together? Or are we all just playing a game of pretend, wearing these masks of certainty, when beneath it all, we’re all still fumbling, still wondering, still waiting for the real moment to come, the one where we suddenly know what we’re doing?

There’s comfort in the thought that maybe we’re all in the same boat, though. But maybe that’s a little too hopeful, too naïve. Maybe some people really do know exactly where they’re headed, and I’m just the one sitting here in the waiting room, looking at everyone else’s tickets and wondering why mine doesn’t match. Maybe it’s not about not knowing. Maybe it’s about the way we talk about not knowing. Like there’s something wrong with it. Like you’re supposed to have a roadmap by now, a “vision,” a “dream.” What happens if you don’t? Do you just keep walking in circles? Or do you embrace the randomness? The chaos? I don’t know.

I wish I could say there’s peace in the not knowing. Maybe there is, but it feels too... fleeting. Like you’re almost there, almost at the edge of something, but it keeps retreating. The questions, the uncertainty—they swirl around me like smoke. Sometimes, I think they’re the only thing that’s really real. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe we’ve all been looking for answers when we should have been looking for the questions themselves.

Maybe we’ve all been told too many times that we need to find our “purpose,” our “calling.” Maybe it’s not about finding anything at all. Maybe it’s just about being. Being here. But even that doesn’t feel enough sometimes, does it? Because then you’re left with the nagging thought that maybe you’re missing something, something everyone else is on the verge of discovering. But maybe they’re not either. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of wanderers pretending we know where we’re going, pretending we’re on the path when all we really have is a moment, and that’s all.

So, here I am—twenty-three—and still wondering. Still trying to make sense of the noise and the quiet, the questions and the answers, the direction and the detours. But I wonder—can I truly be okay with this? Or is there just too much pressure to find something? To arrive somewhere? Maybe the trick isn’t to find the answers, but to stay in the question. To let it be the thing that keeps you moving. Not in a straight line, but in spirals, in loops, in circles that never quite close but always keep you on the move.

And so, I keep walking. Quietly. Maybe that’s enough?

Moving through this strange intersection of life, caught between a past that still whispers, and a future that feels perpetually out of reach. It's like standing in the doorway of a room, wondering whether to step in, but somehow frozen in the threshold. What is it about that threshold that holds us there, in the limbo, in the in-between? Is it fear? Or is it just that, deep down, we’ve all been conditioned to believe that we should know what comes next?

The odd part is, the world doesn’t really ask for clarity, does it? Not from anyone. We assume that everyone else is walking with purpose, that they’ve got their paths laid out like a string of pearls, each one perfectly spaced. But the more I look, the more I realize: no one has it figured out. Not really. They’re just walking along, carrying their own whispers of doubt in their pockets, pretending that they don’t hear them, maybe even convincing themselves that they don’t exist. Everyone's just trying to keep up with the illusion. Some people just happen to be better at it than others. I can hear them sometimes, the ones who make it look easy. Their voices are full of certainty, full of the right answers, the right moves. And then there's me, sitting here with a question mark hanging over my head, wondering if I missed the lesson on how to sound that confident.

But it doesn’t stop. The questions. The questions keep coming, and I’m not even sure if they’re helping. They might just be distractions, like the static on an old radio, fuzzing up everything around me. Sometimes, I get tired of listening to them, but then I remember that the questions are all I’ve got. If I let go of them, what would be left? An empty space? A void? I think it’s easier to live in the question than to try to find an answer that doesn't quite fit. Maybe that's why I'm still here—still questioning, still wondering, still walking, though not in a straight line. More like a zigzag that never fully gets anywhere.

And yet, the weight of expectation is never far behind. The invisible pressure from everyone around me—family, friends, society—always reminds me that there’s a timeline, a schedule I’m supposed to be following. It’s a quiet hum in the background, urging me to “hurry up,” to “catch up,” to “figure it out.” But what does it even mean to "figure it out"? It’s not like there’s a finish line, a finish line that guarantees satisfaction or contentment. It's like someone handed me a map, but it's so worn, so faded, that I can't even read it anymore. Maybe that’s the trick, though: maybe I’m not supposed to read it. Maybe I’m not supposed to follow it at all.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that all these “milestones” everyone talks about—career, love, family—are just distractions. They’re little glittering pieces of the puzzle, but they aren’t the puzzle. They’re not the thing I’m supposed to be chasing. But what is the thing I’m supposed to be chasing? If I don’t know what’s next, how do I know if I’m moving in the right direction? And yet, I can’t seem to stop walking. Can’t seem to stop moving. Not because I know where I’m going, but because standing still feels like an impossible option. Even if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, at least I’m doing something. At least I’m moving.

And I wonder, in the silence of my own thoughts, how many others are feeling the same? Maybe it’s not just me, stuck in this maze of uncertainty. Maybe it’s everyone. Maybe the whole world is just full of people walking around with questions in their pockets, pretending that they don’t hear the static. The questions are too loud to ignore, and yet, we all try. We try to drown them out with the noise of “success,” of “accomplishment,” of “getting it together.” But when the noise fades, all we’re left with are the questions. And it’s funny how the questions seem to get louder as I get older, like a growing chorus in the back of my mind. Is it that I’ve stopped pretending to have answers, or is it that the answers never existed in the first place?

Sometimes, I think I’m afraid of the questions because they don’t offer any comforting promises. There’s no resolution in them, no neat bow at the end. They just hang there, suspended in the air like a cloud, dark and heavy, but never quite dissipating. There’s no roadmap. No clear-cut directions. Just the haze of possibility. The terrifying, beautiful chaos of not knowing.

It’s strange, though—there’s a certain liberation in the confusion. It’s not the kind of liberation that comes with a sense of clarity or understanding, but the kind that lets you exist in the mess. The kind that allows you to step off the path everyone else is walking and stumble into your own. Maybe there’s no one answer, no one way. Maybe the trick is to let it all be messy, to be okay with not knowing. But I can’t help but wonder, what does it mean to be “okay” with the mess? Am I really okay, or am I just too tired to fight against it?

And so I keep walking, my steps uncertain, my thoughts just as unsteady. Maybe I’m not supposed to find the answers after all. Maybe I’m supposed to be just here, in this moment, with these questions, letting them swirl around me without trying to contain them. Maybe there’s beauty in that. But it’s hard to feel the beauty when everyone else seems to have found their way, when they talk about their plans, their futures, their lives that look so beautifully scripted. It’s hard to not wonder if I missed the page where everything made sense.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not about finding the answers or making sense of it all. Maybe it’s just about staying in the middle of it. In the mess, in the noise, in the questions. Maybe that’s where the real living happens. Not in the conclusion, but in the question itself.

So here I am, still wondering, still questioning. Still not quite fitting into the picture that everyone else seems to have drawn for me. Still walking through this world of noise and quiet, trying to find a place where I can make sense of it all—or at least make peace with the fact that maybe I’m not supposed to.

It wasn’t the silence that scared me, it was the thought that maybe, I was the silence. And, in that silence, I thought I was hearing my own thoughts, but what if they weren’t mine at all? And then it hit me: maybe the real question is whether I’ll ever stop asking, or if one day, the questions will start asking me instead.

- Oizys.

P.S. Started this piece in April 2023, and here I am, wrapping it up in April 2025—guess some questions really do take their time.