Every morning, I wake up with absolutely no idea who I’m going to be by the time I go to sleep.
Photo by Ron Lach from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-holding-his-eyeglasses-8036341/
I might start the day with a head full of plans and enough momentum to chase them, only to find myself sitting frozen a few hours later, questioning things I was entirely sure of just breakfast ago. Nothing dramatic even has to happen. My own thoughts are heavy enough to pull the floor out from under a perfectly good afternoon.
It’s strange how much violent noise can happen inside someone who looks completely still from the outside.
The Internal Interrogations
I talk to myself in ways I’d never dream of talking to anyone else.
• When I’m hopeful: I’m my own cheerleader.
• The second that hope slips: The interrogations start. Why are you like this? What are you actually looking for? Why do you keep bruising your knuckles against questions that don't have answers?
I can spend a whole morning building myself up, piece by piece, and then undo the entire structure before lunchtime. Then I sleep, wake up, and start stacking the bricks again. Sometimes I have to laugh at how ridiculous it is. But mostly, I just wonder why I'm trapped in this loop.
Maybe I just haven’t found another way to carry everything I’m holding.
Shifting Weather
Every single day feels different. Some days let me breathe. Others make the most basic, ordinary tasks feel like wading through wet cement.
I can’t explain the shift. I can wake up in the exact same room, look at the same faces, follow the exact same routine, and still feel like a total stranger to the version of myself that existed yesterday. That’s the most terrifying part of being alive: you never really know what a random Tuesday is going to drag out of you.
I look at the sky sometimes and realize how lazy we are with words. We call it "blue," and we leave it at that. But I’ve watched it:
• Bruise into grey before a storm
• Vanish behind thick, claustrophobic clouds
• Dissolve into black until the stars are the only things left holding it together
The sky at 8:00 AM rarely looks like the sky at 8:00 PM. Yet, we call it the same sky.
I think we do the exact same thing to ourselves. We decide we’re "strong" because we survived one bad year, and then we feel deeply ashamed when the next minor inconvenience brings us to our knees. We tell people we’re "happy," then sit with a hollow chest, wondering why we feel so empty. We get so obsessed with a specific version of who we think we are that we reject all the other messy pieces.
I know I do.
The Crowd and the Quiet
For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the most detached from people when I’m actually standing right next to them. I can sit in a crowded room and feel like my mind is locked in a basement where nobody can reach me. It’s not even that I want to be isolated. Most of the time, I’m just desperate for someone to understand what I mean before I have to go through the exhausting trial of trying to put it into words.
But true understanding isn’t as simple as just listening to someone talk.
There are things I keep entirely to myself because trying to explain them feels impossible. Disappointments that completely shifted how I view the people around me. Moments that made me wonder if trusting anyone ever again is worth the gamble. I hate admitting that I’ve become more guarded and cynical, but lying about it feels worse.
Some days, I’d rather pull the blinds and disappear than explain why I’m not "myself." I want space from everyone—including the person everyone expects me to be.
But the joke is that when I finally get that quiet, my brain just follows me right into the room. You can't outrun yourself.
Sitting with the Noise
So, lately, I’ve been trying to learn how to just sit on the floor with the person I find when the noise stops.
He’s not always pleasant. Sometimes he’s deeply confused, sometimes he's bitter, and usually, he’s just exhausted from trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t make sense. But he’s also the only one who remembers what I actually care about, even when I’ve temporarily lost the energy to care about anything at all.
I don’t always trust his judgment. We fight constantly.
Lately, it feels like I’m carrying a heavy weight that I can't quite name. I want to move forward, but even picking a direction feels paralyzing. I don’t know if I’m shedding skin to become someone new, or if I’m just drowning trying to understand the person I already am.
Looking Forward
All I know for sure is that I am done pretending.
• I don’t want to waste the rest of my life mimicking other people.
• I refuse to measure my progress against a timeline that isn't mine.
• I might take the wrong road.
• I’ll definitely change my mind.
• I might even discover that some core belief I held about myself was a lie.
I’ll just have to look that reality in the eye and live with it.
I still have days where the hope drains out completely. I can’t tell you when that stops happening, and honestly, I’m too tired to keep making empty promises to myself about how "everything happens for a reason" or how it'll all turn out fine in the end. Right now, the only real thing I can do is be completely honest about being stuck, right here, instead of pretending I’ve already figured it out.
Tomorrow, the conversation in my head will start all over again. I’ll make a few plans, I’ll pick them apart, and I’ll try to find one good reason to keep going.