There’s no reason I should feel like this.

That’s the worst part.
My life isn’t falling apart.
It’s fine.
It’s good.
My girlfriend tells me she loves me and I believe her.
My friends invite me out and I say yes.
Sometimes, I even laugh.
And then, in the middle of the night or a Wednesday afternoon,
my body decides it’s time to collapse in on itself.

No warning.
Just a quiet shutting down,
like the lights in a store
right before closing.

I’ll be walking through a parking lot
and suddenly my chest forgets how to keep rhythm.
My heart races like it's being chased
but there’s nothing behind me—
just a car, a tree, a sky that doesn’t care.

Try explaining that to someone.
Try saying,
“No, I’m not sad.
I’m just... not here at the moment.”
Or,
“Yes, I love you.
I just also kind of want to disappear right now.”

Some nights, I lie in bed like it’s a battlefield.
It’s 1:03 a.m.
The ceiling fan spins like it’s counting down to something.
I try to breathe like the apps taught me.
In through the nose.
Hold.
Out through the mouth.
Hold.
But panic doesn’t care about wellness trends.
It grabs my ribs like a thief looking for something valuable
and finds only noise.

The worst part is the stillness after.
When my body finally unclenches
and I’m left staring into the blank of 1:58 a.m.
fully aware I’ll be useless tomorrow.
But more afraid of the idea
that this is just... how it is.

I’m not suicidal.
Not in the way people imagine.
I don’t want to die.
I just want to stop existing
for like a day.
Maybe three.
Just enough to sleep without dreaming,
to pause the timeline,
to not have to explain why I haven’t texted back
or why I skipped another thing I should’ve shown up for.

Motivation?
It’s not that I don’t want to do things.
It’s that I can’t.
Not metaphorically—literally.
Some days I sit at the edge of my bed
for an hour
trying to convince my legs
that standing isn’t a threat.
Trying to convince my brain
that brushing my teeth isn’t Everest.

People say,
“You just have to push through.”
As if I haven’t been pushing
every single ******* day
against a door that swings shut
every time I blink.

And yet—
Here I am.
Breathing.
Shaking.
Still here.

Not heroic.
Not inspirational.
Just... here.
And maybe that’s not a triumph,
but it’s what I must cling on to
as my only saving grace.

Another night, another drink.
Not too much—just enough.
Enough to ease the tightness
when I think of your hands on my arm.

Sober, it’s too much.
My chest burns,
tears press forward,
my breath turns on me.

I try to ground myself—
TV flicker,
phone glow,
messy bed,
tight socks,
empty bottle.

Five things I can smell—
but I stop.
The bottle stares back.
Still empty.

I head downstairs,
open the fridge,
grab a few more.
Not to get drunk—
just to keep the sting away.

I say I’m healing.
Say therapy’s helped.
But I don’t believe I have a problem.
My bottles are quiet enough to believe me.

They pile beside me,
the only ones
who know the truth.

They said “Bad feelings are temporary”
Are they?

Is it the optimistic urge to let them go
And free the space for upcoming more?
And how do we know what’s coming isn’t as bad?
Can we mesure how much we endured
and how much is left ?

“Bad feelings are temporary”,
Do we at some point in life upgrade
and reach access to the sanctuary?
Is it fair share the amount of things
that are upsetting or scary?

How can you say it’s temporary ?
when every corner in me is hunted
with a heavy weight of a hurting feeling
How many did I drop and
How many do I still carry?
My shoulders are tired
And my bones are growing weary

“Bad feelings are temporary”,
How come they become bad in the first place?
Don’t they have a purpose
Or do they just occupy space?
Do we need to feel anxious or not enough
in order to grow more tough?
Couldn’t we just all agree to not be rough?
Couldn’t we change the rules
So the gentle one survives?

Couldn’t we care more
And help each other feel a little less
of the bad feelings that we call temporary?

-HexaWhirl<3

Depersonalization: - (from Cambridge Dictionary) “experiencing events as if you were a third party observer, disconnected from your body or feelings”.

                                  - (from Dictionary.com) 1. the act of depersonalizing; 2. the state of being depersonalized; 3. Psychiatry. a state in which one no longer perceives the reality of one's self or one's environment.

                                   - (from lived experience)

1. A feeling turned sentiment, spontaneity that lasts too long, way too long, way too little; a moment stolen from the hustle and bustle, the conversations of others and mine; taken and returned like an eraser during a test; given and returned in perfect condition, unless the eraser’s yours, in which case you know this to be untrue: Fundamental change occurred, nothing really changed, nothing’s really different; You know this and yet you can’t go back, it’s impossible; Time isn’t linear, but it is and someone dirtied your timeline. Why are your hands *****?

2. A lost key, item, bauble, thing, it doesn’t matter; Held in your hand one moment, leaving you the next; did it leave of its own accord? Did it take up the road and walk away? Was it you?Without it, you can’t enter home and yet you enter home and it is your home, clinically yours, truthfully stranger: You lost your way home, you’ve known it since birth, since speech, since thought and yet you left and there is no way home: You are not lost.

3. Being lost, being unaware, you are lost; there is no body to hold you, ground you; You stole your costume, it knows you stole it, it won’t let you go: prisoner, thief, vagabond; You are so lost that you forgot: you’re not you, there is no you, there never has been, why would there be? You would be able to find yourself within the faces of others, the bodies of others, the existence of others; but there is no you, so you cannot, must not exist in their eyes, their nose, their teeth and bones, oh! boneless wanderer, there is no you among them.

4. Alienation from others, alienation from myself- An Exercise In Description.

back in time  to the stranger-danger eighties
  when you could really taste the concrete
and the end of the world really meant it
  (or that's what it felt like anyway)

Do you know
how butterflies come to life?
It’s more frightening
than you might think.

Born crawling
a caterpillar,
close to the ground
naïve to the sky
simply existing,
tasting the world
leaf by leaf.

And then
it begins.
A hush inside the body,
a quiet undoing.
Behaviors shift,
instincts sharpen,
the soul sketches its wings in secret.
The old self unravels.

Did you know
that little caterpillar
melts into goo?
Not a creature in waiting
just formless, floating cells.
And from that
a butterfly emerges,
grown entirely
from what was already there.

I’ve been stuck in that goo
the nowhere between
trauma and metamorphosis,
neither alive nor lost,
just suspended.

But this summer
brought tears as ink,
and from the scribbled ache
came liberating wings
fragile but certain,
drawn from silence.

I've started flying.
But I still glance down
when I shouldn’t
afraid that my pride and joy
will be mistaken for arrogance.
Yet I’m proud
proud that I can love again.
Proud that flying
feels so familiar.

I like to land
booping noses of dogs
showing up beside strangers
on quiet benches.
To hear their voices
for the very first time
to sense the tremble
of their own becoming.
And when I look,
I see it:
a shimmer in their stillness,
a whisper in their pause.
The butterfly
still hidden in its goo.

And I hope
they’ll pass it on
this softness,
this seeing.

That ripple we call
the butterfly effect

Fallen cherry blooms,
Sticks to my wet skin like grief,
Brief and hard to hold.

The night is hidden in the clouds
Waking up, with thoughts waiting to be heard.
Tears fall down my face.
The world is silent — yet the war in my mind is louder.
The surroundings aren’t the same as before.
No birds chirping. No noisy neighbors. No owls hooting.
Nothing… but silence.
Just you and your thoughts.
Notes are ready to be filled,
But the darkness holds you back.
You can’t move. Thoughts fill the room,
But your lips remain mute.