Today was my grandfather’s sister’s funeral. It was early in the morning and the weather was fittingly cloudy, and everyone was in some way irascible.

And, well, nobody ever really knows how to behave before a funeral.

I think by now most of us are familiar with the odd way in which grief presents itself.

My family had been preparing for this funeral for days, and beforehand were aware of the eventual passing she would meet since her condition had not been getting any better.

When we arrived at the chapel, my attention landed on this bird perched near the ceiling, above everyone else in the room, atop the large window frame at the very back. The window had a view of the trees behind the chapel, and the other birds flying and resting on them.

Throughout the short mass and speeches, this bird had just been flying around the ceiling, darting between chandeliers, window frames, and door frames, pecking at the glass and seemingly trying to find its way out.

During my mother’s eulogy, everyone—as far as I could see—was in tears. But I just couldn’t take my focus away from this bird.

At some point, it began flying in circles around the ceiling, before hurling itself headfirst into the window.

The bird had killed itself, and no one except me had noticed. I know, I know, it’s a funeral, what’s your problem?

The thing is, I couldn’t stop thinking about how violent that looked. Not poetic. Not symbolic in the beautiful, cinematic way people like to force onto death afterward. It looked confused and panicked. The bird kept seeing the freedom it could have had through the glass and throwing itself toward it until its body simply failed before its instinct did.

And while everyone around me was grieving someone who had been prepared for death for days, maybe weeks, or maybe even years, I was staring at something that had no comprehension of what was happening to it at all. Something that would soon become all but an inconvenience for whoever was tasked with cleaning the chapel.

I kept thinking about how strange it is that grief can make your attention cruelly specific. Some people fixate on flowers. Some people stare at the casket handles. Some people remember the texture of someone’s hand more vividly than their face. And apparently, I watched a bird die in the middle of a eulogy.

Not because I didn’t care. If anything, perhaps because my mind could not fully process the enormity of the room all at once.

There was already so much death present there, in the prayers accompanied by swollen eyes, the obviously exhausted politeness people perform at funerals. And then suddenly there was this tiny additional casualty, frantic and alone, casting itself against invisible boundaries while everyone else remained unaware.

It felt obscene. Almost intimate.

For a moment, I think I envied the bird’s honesty. It didn’t know how to mourn properly. It didn’t know how to sit still and lower its head reverently while pretending to understand mortality. It only knew that something was wrong and that it desperately wanted out, whether that something wrong was the nature of the situation or just the fact that it was stuck in a place it was not supposed to be in.

Human beings love ceremonies because they make death appear organized. As though grief can be arranged neatly into speeches, flowers, black clothing, and catered food in styrofoam containers afterward. Meanwhile, somewhere near the ceiling and eventually on the ground, something small and terrified died with not even a shred of dignity or meaning.

And somehow that felt closer to the truth.

Perhaps we invented ceremonies to avoid admitting that none of us really know what to do with endings.

Recently, I’ve been watching The Pitt, and the audience’s reaction unsettled me more than the show itself. There’s a character a lot of people seem to hate. He’s abrasive, dismissive, openly unkind, and has no patience for anyone he recognizes himself in. That part requires no effort.

What takes effort, apparently, is noticing the obvious, which is that he is not well.

It’s heavily implied that he’s on the verge of ending his life, yet the response I keep seeing is people telling him to go through with it, not even ironically, as if being difficult makes someone undeserving of staying alive.

They criticize him for lacking empathy while demonstrating none of their own.

The way he treats people is wrong, but it doesn’t come from nowhere. Understanding him does not mean excusing him. When someone is breaking down, it shows in how they speak and react, how little patience they have left, and just.. in everything. You don’t have to tolerate it, but pretending it happens just because, is willful blindness.

I’m writing this not only because I think it’s important, but because I’ve been in this situation before.

I’ve been the person who made themselves unpleasant on purpose and pushed people away in advance. It felt like they learned to hate me first, then leaving would hurt them less. In my head, that counted as kindness.

I didn’t arrive at that point all at once, of course. It happened in gradual decisions that I kept justifying to myself as unrelated, like I was only getting close enough to the edge to understand what it felt like, but not close enough to actually meet it. I kept asking myself how far I could go before it became something I couldn’t take back, how much of myself I could push away, how badly I could act before people finally stopped expecting anything from me, and there was something almost relieving in that—in knowing that if I made myself difficult enough, unbearable enough, then whatever happened after wouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.

And even when I told myself I was still in control, that I could stop whenever I wanted, I knew I wasn’t really trying to stop, I was trying to see what it would feel like to reach that point and still keep going, just to prove to myself that I could.

From the outside, it looks like someone becoming unbearable, someone snapping too fast and saying things that don’t match who they used to be. It’s easier to label them as difficult or selfish or exhausting than to ask what it takes for a person to get to that point in the first place. Because that question is uncomfortable, obviously.

Because it’s more comfortable to believe that they chose to be that way than to admit that something inside them has been breaking for far longer than anyone noticed, and that by the time it shows, it has already gone too far to be hidden.

And the worst part is that none of it feels like cruelty when you are the one doing it. It feels justified, almost necessary, like you are sparing them from something worse or giving them a cleaner version of the ending before it actually happens.

You tell yourself that it’s better this way, that if they learn to resent you now then they won’t have to grieve you later, and you hold onto that logic even when it starts to unravel, even when there are moments when you realize that what you really are doing is isolating yourself in a way that makes leaving easier.

But by then you are already too far into it, already committed to the version of yourself that they can hate, because turning back would mean facing them as you are, and that feels far more unbearable than being misunderstood.

So when I see people reduce someone like that to nothing more than “an asshole,” it feels dishonest in a way that goes beyond simple misjudgment. It feels like a kind of avoidance, like they’re choosing the most convenient version of him so they don’t have to engage with anything more complicated.

People don’t like to admit that someone can be both cruel and collapsing at the same time. That someone can hurt others while barely holding themselves together. It’s easier to pick a side. Villain or victim. Nothing in between.

But there is always something in between.

You never really know what someone is going through. And I know that line gets overused, but it stays true in the worst situations. Some people aren’t asking for sympathy—they’re trying to make it through the day without falling apart completely.

The least anyone can do is not push them closer to the edge.

And for what it’s worth, if someone is already thinking about disappearing, they don’t need help being hated. They’re already doing that part themselves.

It doesn’t hurt to have a little empathy!

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Depollute me, gentle angel
And I’ll feel the sickness less and less
Come and kiss me, pretty baby
Like we’ll never have sex

Would you love me the same if you knew we’d never have sex? Would it be, for you, a tragedy or a liberation?

I have craved love so deeply that I’ve become blind to the way I bargain with my own body, so much so that it almost feels like I must offer something consumable in order to be kept.

I fear sometimes that I am unfit to be loved. I am afraid of people seeing me as I see myself, and finding nothing worth staying for once my body is out of the deal and my soul is bare.

Sex sells, I know that.

I know I can hold someone’s gaze and feel, for a moment, powerful while being wanted. And in those moments, I feel undeniable. But once I’ve been touched, once it’s over, it feels like I have given too much too quickly.

But what if it’s also affirmation? I can never just write something without disagreeing with myself.

If someone loved you deeply but never desired you sexually, would you feel safe or rejected? I’m not sure I would survive being loved without being wanted.

There is a difference between being respected and being desired, and I am afraid of losing the latter and calling it peace. What if I’ve confused being desired with being chosen? And—what if, without desire, I would start to doubt the love entirely?

Still, the idea of someone being here when there is nothing to anticipate is appealing.

I do not want to be the highlight of your night and the afterthought of your morning. I want to be the conversation that you still think of when the lights are off and the night is quiet.

Love me in the pauses. Love me in the absence of urgency. Let desire be something that grows slowly from knowing me, not something that rushes ahead of it.

Ask me why I am afraid of being replaceable. Notice how I overanalyse everything. Memorise the small things: how I hesitate before admitting I care, how I pretend indifference when I am actually terrified of losing you.

In the midst of having no distractions and no heat to blur the edges, would you still choose me when there is nothing new to uncover, when I am no longer a mystery but a pattern you have learned by heart?

When there is nothing else for you to do but to know me completely, to swim in the river of my soul and memorise every curve and contradiction, would you still be here?

I want to know what it feels like to be chosen without being negotiated, to be wanted without feeling consumed.

So love me like we’ll never have sex.

Not because desire is wrong, and not because I do not crave it, but because I need to know that it is not the only thing holding you here.

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I have always been praised for being smart, and I won’t bother being noble about it. People around me have always told me this, but I can’t help but wonder if I’ve fooled them or if they’re just lying to me.

There has been no worse heartbreak than realising I can’t pursue every single career I want. I am constantly haunted by the millions of possibilities in my future, and the fact that I can only choose one. What if I want to be a pilot, a lawyer, an artist, a musician, a scientist, a writer, a psychologist, and an archaeologist, all at the same time?

I feel like my life has been ripped out of my hands, and I’m not sure which scares me more: choosing one path and failing, or choosing one path and succeeding but feeling like it still isn’t enough.

Time is my greatest enemy, and ambition is the first runner-up. One demands I choose while the other refuses to just shut up. I am caught between a clock that keeps taking and a mind that keeps wanting, and it is torture.

I am constantly advised to focus, as if focus is a moral achievement instead of a narrowing. As if choosing one thing is not also the deliberate abandonment of dozens of other opportunities.

People talk about commitment like it’s proof of depth, but to me it feels like consent to amputation. Every time I imagine settling into a single path, I feel the panic of futures being sealed off without appeal.

What unsettles me is not just the idea of being average, but the idea of being finalized.

Mastery demands permanence. I’d have to commit long enough to be evaluated and pinned down by outcomes instead of possibility. But beginnings are generous. They allow brilliance to exist in potential without much evidence.

I don’t leave because I am incapable. I leave because staying would mean discovering the limits of what I am.

So I am forced to live suspended between aptitude and refusal. Too skilled to be careless, too restless to be faithful.

What frustrates me most is how easily this restlessness is mistaken for a lack of seriousness, how easily curiosity is mistaken for a defect instead of a capacity.

I am not scattering myself because I am shallow. I am responding to the fact that the world offers more than one way to be useful, more than one way to think, and more than one way to live with intention.

And I understand that the world does not require me to compress brilliance into a single silhouette. Still, every choice feels like an erasure as much as it is an act of making.

Commitment doesn’t just build something new; it cuts away what can no longer be lived. I am not afraid of effort or depth. I am afraid of selection and having to decide which selves are allowed to survive and which must be abandoned.

To choose is to create, yes, but it is also to accept loss as structural, not accidental, and I am still learning how to stand inside that trade without resenting the shape it leaves me in.

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I must confess, dear reader, that one grows strangely fond of mourning disasters of their own making.

You might laugh at the absurdity of it, yet I found myself doing precisely that, standing before the wreck with an air of injured innocence. As it often does, my mind prefers a gentler story than the truth, and so I nearly convinced myself that fate, not my own hand, had arranged this little tragedy. Still, if you look closely, you will see what I eventually had to admit: every fractured piece bore my signature.

In truth, there was a certain comfort in pretending the sorrow had arrived uninvited. It allowed me to stand apart from it, as though I were merely observing another’s misfortune rather than tending to the consequences of my own making. I will not claim this was noble. It was simply easier. And I admit to my tendency to cling to whatever illusion spares me the full weight of responsibility.

And so the story wanders toward the part I would rather omit, dear reader: the part where I let go of someone who had not asked to be set aside. I spoke the words with a certainty I did not possess, stepped out of the door as though I were capable of bearing the aftermath with dignity (metaphorically, given the fact that my so-called courage amounted only to sending it through a screen). The bravado lasted all of ten minutes. A person can leave a room with great conviction and still collapse into doubt the moment the door closes, and I did exactly that.

For months afterward, I rehearsed a hundred justifications to soothe myself. I insisted it was necessary, insisted the ache meant nothing. Yet each insistence trembled. The truth, my friend, was far less elegant. I missed her. I missed her in ways I refused to name, and so the grief masqueraded as principle while I pretended to be the sort who makes clean choices and stands by them.

You understand this, dear reader, don’t you? That slow dance between certainty and that creeping suspicion that you’ve made a ruin of something you were not at all prepared to lose. I told myself I was above such sentiment, that I could carry the consequence with a straight spine and an orderly mind. However, while I had been performing that little theatre, there was a part of me cataloguing every hour without them, noting how each one felt slightly askew.

It must be said, dear reader, that regret does not behave kindly. It haunts, circling my mind like a visitor who has overstayed their welcome yet refuses to be dismissed. And here I was, entertaining it, offering it a chair, letting it speak. Not because I enjoyed its company, but because it carried a truth I could no longer push aside.

I had let go of someone I was still aching for. And the ache, despite all my attempts to silence it, kept asking the same inconvenient question: had I already forfeited any chance of standing before them again?

But let me spare you one illusion before you wander off thinking you’re above all this. You aren’t. Sooner or later, you will make a choice that feels righteous in the moment and unbearable in the aftermath. You’ll tell yourself it was necessary, you’ll give speeches in the mirror about growth and self-preservation, and then you’ll feel that slight tug months later and think, “what the fuck have I done?” as you realise you’ve walked away from something you had still very much wanted.

When that happens, dear reader, I must tell you not to unravel. Your heart may panic easily, but panic is not a plan. You’ll want to rush back, to undo the finality of your own words, and to believe that longing automatically grants you a second chance, but it doesn’t. And it’s better you learn to live with the ache than go knocking on the past just because the present feels thin.

Sit with it instead. Let the restlessness burn itself out without dragging you behind it. You will think of them, of course. Everyone does! That doesn’t mean the story demands a sequel. Missing someone is not a summons to return; it is simply proof that you once cared enough to hurt.

And if you are fortunate, there comes a shift in your longing. The ache does not vanish, but it learns to soften, as though it has grown tired of announcing itself. You rise one morning and discover you are no longer bargaining with what has already passed. You simply continue, not out of triumph, but because the road moves forward whether you feel ready or not.

And along that road you will notice, as I did, the many inviting places where a person might choose to stop. They appear harmless enough, and I admit it is tempting to linger there, to imagine that staying still is safer than proceeding; however, dear reader, happiness, or whatever modest peace stands in its place, is found only by walking past those easy halts and resisting the urge to settle in the very spots that would keep you circling the same grief.

There is no heroism in regret, but there is dignity in living through it.

I sincerely apologise for writing this like a victorian child, but it’s just so fun lol ˙𐃷˙

There are bonds that form long before you understand what “bonding” is.

They embed themselves deep in your body, as sediment does over time. Layer by layer, until your life practically bends around their weight.

You feel as though you’ve made a choice about this bond. And you could leave at any point; or any version of the story that would make leaving seem like a noble act; or even a deliberate one; or at least, reasonable.

The reality is much simpler, and far less flattering.

Some people will be able to inscribe themselves so profoundly on your very soul that every aspect of your interior is organized to include them. It’s inevitable!

And often this has nothing to do with romance or loyalty. Sometimes it’s simply that something in you responded to them (and not necessarily in the manner you’re thinking, pervert) before any thought ever entered the situation. Pun intended.

This is a pull older than your preferences, a gravity that didn’t ask for your permission. (not that gravity ever asks for permission)

You can evolve, break apart, and build new forms of architecture to house whatever is left of you; however, there will always be a part of you that is aware of the existence of this person in your structure.

They will always persist somewhere in the scaffolding like an extant presence you cannot excise without collapsing parts of yourself you still need.

It feels unfair to call it fate but also feels dishonest to call it choice.

So what really? —Don’t look at me, I’m not answering that for you.

Thus, you learn to live with the tie.

You may call it closure, or distance, or healing..

but really, none of those words can actually explain why your pulse suddenly gets louder at the thought of them.

This occurs outside of the realm of language, and outside of the realm of logic; and certainly outside any of the tidy categories that you try to sort yourself into.

It doesn’t resolve. Not due to emotion, but rather due to structural reasons, as if the bond has become a fundamental part of your internal physics…or something.

The truth is, sometimes people come into your life with an intent that you can only realise afterwards.

Not divine, nor destined, just terrifyingly precise. As if the universe, in all its disorder, managed to place two elements in the exact places where collision was unavoidable.

It’s those people whose presence rewrites the way you think and move before you even understand what’s happening.

You’ll look back and see that you had no chance of being anything else, as this has been about recognition—not love in the simplistic decorative ways you have learned to call it.

They don’t even need devotion to bind themselves to your story. Not purity, nor tragedy, nor a windswept coastline.

All they need is to exist in the right way in the right moment. And you, with your naive sincerity, will allow them into your life, and you do so only to feel seen—and thus, to finally feel known.

That’s the meaning you keep circling.

Not that they were perfect or that you were chosen by some sacred force, but that the connection revealed a truth that even you didn’t know how to articulate: that you were built within a place that only they could reach, and you offered it without hesitation, all before you understood the cost that existed.

Some bonds aren’t beautiful because they endure—they are beautiful because, in the instant of their forming, they felt inevitable.

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He claimed that when a man stands before a mirror and sees his reflection, it isn’t a true reproduction but an image of himself a moment younger. Because light travels at a fixed speed, the reflection must always belong to a version of him that has already passed.

But I’m not here to dissect that stuff !

~

Feeding the Birds by Eugène Rémy Maes

Anyway, don’t you ever wish you didn’t know what you looked like? How many times have you overthought how others might see you, given that you see yourself.. y’know, like that?

Don’t worry, this entire thing isn’t just a dig on you.

There are times when I push people I love away because I’m scared they might see me the way I see myself. Pathetic, I know. And if you do it to, I apologise for calling you pathetic. (I don’t really care, though)

Man, I miss being a child. I miss not giving a shit if my opinion bothers someone. Or if someone doesn’t like the way I look.

But really, who cares?

I mean, have you ever been bothered by someone because you thought they were just a tiny bit weird or ugly, even if they’re the nicest person on the planet? No, because you’re (probably) a decent human being. So why do you care so much about what you see in the mirror?

There is so much relief in that moment when the self slips and you forget to put up the act of being a “normal” human being.

Kids do it all the time! Lovers do it without noticing, & the drunk fall into it like gravity is doing them a favor. That little interval where the gaze loosens and your mind stops cataloguing every flaw with forensic zeal.

It feels almost supernatural when it happens to me.

It’s like a small detour from the incessant appraisal. Like abandoning the parlance I use to scold myself.

I wander into a version of me that’s lighter, almost effervescent, as if my body isn’t a cage but some extant thing moving under its own logic. Ya feel me? I bet you do.

And it’s all good! …until you pass by a mirror.

That slab of glass with its smug certainty and its insistence on veracity. It drags you back to the figure you’ve constructed in your head, the one stitched together from every passing judgment you’ve ever imagined from other people’s eyes.

It’s fucking ridiculous how fast it happens. One glance and the spell fractures and your mind floods with its usual avarice for control and all that shit you do.

And still, part of you craves the slip. Admit it!

The momentary suspension of self-surveillance where existence feels full-bodied, almost placid in its simplicity.

Honestly, I chase it the way some people chase sleep or forgiveness or that one unforgettable high when they (accidentally!) smoked a bit too much. Those brief moments when a reflection loses its authority and I become something raw and unguarded.

But can you blame me? Imagine being able to move without instinctively checking for witnesses!

Children, lovers, the drunk—they return to that state with a courage I rarely manage. They trust the world to hold them without needing to monitor every single breath. They’re starry-eyed enough to forget the rules for a little while. And that sounds like a fucking dream.

I want that again! That freedom of not analysing every gesture.

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Here you are, clawing your way towards the one thing the mirror keeps trying to steal from you: ease.

Not confidence, not beauty, not whatever nonsense you think other people possess that you don’t. Just ease. The ability to exist without rehearsing every expression like you’re about to audition for the role of “acceptable person number three.”

You ever notice how children don’t try too hard to pose? They just are.

They crash into rooms, spill their thoughts everywhere, smear their faces with whatever they touched last, and not once do they pause to ask if their angle is flattering. (I dunno, I don’t spend time with children)

They haven’t yet learned the curse of seeing themselves from the outside. That awful indoctrination arrives later, when the world starts teaching you to live like a photograph someone else might judge.

And lovers, god. Lovers forget themselves because they’re too busy studying someone else.

Their gaze trades inward scrutiny for outward marvel. They stop being their own prison guard for a moment, and the relief shows in every softening line of their face.

The drunk, meanwhile, gain that freedom by accident, dissolving in their own haze, too irascible or too blissed-out to care where their edges begin or end.

Their reticence dissolves, and for a few stupid hours (usually until the sun comes up) they stop carrying the weight of their own self-awareness. It’s messy, sure, but at least there’s authenticity in it.

A person stripped of their internal audience, unpolished and unafraid.

Meanwhile you and I stand here whacking ourselves with the same stick of self-awareness like it’s a moral obligation.

As if hypervigilance earns us anything except exhaustion. Like constantly checking your reflection makes you more veracious or more lovable or more… whatever.

You really think the glass will grant you absolution if you stare long enough? You idiot!

It never does. It only throws back the version you fear the most, the one that was formed by every imagined insult and every moment of shame that you, for some reason, refuse to just forget.

And you start to wonder if the real punishment isn’t what you look like, but how tirelessly you monitor yourself.

That constant watchfulness, that petulant need to anticipate every opinion before anyone can form it.

No wonder everything feels heavier than it has to, dumbass!

Change that now! Be better. Stop caring what the cashier at the cafe thinks about you or the drink you ordered! No matter how niche or insane that concoction you enjoy is. Stop caring whether your outfit makes you look fat or not. That’s not fat, those are just your organs!

Fucking idiot.

Anyway, I’m done rambling. I’m too drunk to keep writing this shit. Bye!!

Sincerely, Hans <3

˙𐃷˙

I’m gay, and therefore correct.

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The cruel part isn’t even the ruin on the ground, it’s the moment before it. That split second when the creature freezes and lifts its head, meeting the headlights with its awful recognition.

And then, of course, it happens.

It’s easy to look at it and pretend you’re only a witness, until you realise the fear in its posture is the same as yours.

You step toward the light yourself as if wanting could rewrite physics. You tell yourself you’re choosing it, that there’s power in standing unshielded in someone’s path. There isn’t.

Vulnerability isn’t poetic when you live inside it. It’s just a slow walk into the place where you stop being a person and start being the evidence of your own softness.

It’s worse after impact, too. The thing on the asphalt gets taken away, and you don’t. You keep carrying the imprint like a bruise in your thinking, replaying the awful stillness of it. The way the world kept moving while you stayed exactly where it found you.

The thing on the road wasn’t just a body, it was the part of you that didn’t get a warning. The piece that should’ve been able to stay untouched.

And it never even moved, it just took the hit before you knew anything was happening.

There wasn’t a choice in it. That’s the part no one prepares you for—how something bigger than you can close the distance without hesitation, how it decides what happens to your body before you even understand what you’re in the way of.

People talk about innocence like it fades, but it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s ripped out of you in one hit you never agreed to.

The haunting is in the orientation towards the collision. That helpless turning of the head. That moment you offered yourself to something that had no intention of slowing down.

You keep walking around with that same posture, as if you’re still waiting for the light to soften, still hoping you won’t be flattened by what you want.

But wanting is its own violence. It teaches you how to hold your breath and mistake the approaching danger for warmth.

It comes back in small ways, too. Not as some grand heartbreak, just as the sense of being pulled toward a moment you thought you walked away from. And then you’re back at the scene: the dark stretch of road, the glint you noticed for half a second too long.

It isn’t the cruelty of it that torments you, it’s how gentle it all was. How a single instant could undo you without raising its voice.

What’s worse is that there was no one rushing in to lift you from the road and offer you some futile gesture of comfort while you suffer. Just you, staring into the light that didn’t know how to stop.

And later, what stays isn’t the violence but the unnatural calm in the way you remained in that stance long after the moment had died. The way it keeps returning with the same inevitability, shining up from the place where you stalled and didn’t move.

All that love and terror balanced between those eyes, and no one to see it but you.

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Some days, I think I’ve mastered silence. I let the world pass through me, untouched. I smile when expected, nod when required. It feels easier that way — to observe, not to confess. To stay quiet until no one remembers what my voice sounds like. There are times when it feels like peace really is just the absence of noise, need, and wanting too much. Le silence est ma prière et ma punition.

But the body always remembers what the mouth refuses. I can feel it sometimes, the strain of every word I forced back. Like something living in me, trapped, growing teeth.

Silence doesn’t erase anything, it just buries it deeper until it starts to rot.

I think about all the times I wanted to say something simple — I miss you, I’m scared, I didn’t mean to — and swallowed it instead. Did the moment die then, or did I? And if I had spoken, would it have changed anything? Would honesty have saved me, or would it have simply made me more fragile?

There’s this strange kind of grief that comes with restraint. to love quietly. to ache privately. To keep your truth folded so small that even you forget where you hid it. C’est une tendresse qui se dévore elle-même. I don’t know if that’s strength or self-erasure.

Sometimes I think I’d rather ruin everything than stay untouched forever. To speak, even if it ruins the peace I’ve built around my fear. To be misunderstood rather than invisible. J’imagine qu’il vaut mieux brûler que se taire. I crave to finally have the courage, the willingness to be seen in the wrong light.

Because the mouth must be employed in every corner of itself. To speak only halfway is to betray the truth. If I must open my mouth, then I want every part of it to mean what it says.

haha yes, Hozier again

Still, I hesitate. I tell myself that the right words will come when the world is softer, when I’m braver. But the truth is, there is no right moment. There’s only the pulse in my throat, asking the same question again and again.

I think of all the faces I’ve loved and all the words that never reached them. There are ghosts of conversations that still follow me, half-spoken, unfinished. If I could go back, I’d let the words fall, no matter how clumsy. I’d rather be ruined by the truth than remembered for my silence.

Silence asks for nothing, but it takes everything. Speaking, at least, leaves something behind. Proof that i was here, that I tried to bridge the distance. I don’t want to be a monument to restraint. I want to live like I meant every word.

okay, bye ˙𐃷˙

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I’ve spent years trying not to need someone. I’ve badly mistaken control for safety. I used to think that silence was strength, but have only recently realised that living in fear of vulnerability actually isn’t protection, but a cage I built around myself, and, like an ape with its innate stupidity, forgot to make a way out.

I’ve never really been good at letting good things stay good. I flinch before they can hurt me.

I swear I don’t ruin things on purpose, it’s just become an instinct. It feels so much safer to end them myself than wait for someone else to do so. At least then, I know what to expect.

It’s strange — I can accept the uncertainty of what comes after death, or whether anything divine listens when I speak. But when it comes to people, I can’t stand not knowing. I flinch at the doubt that looks me in the eye whenever I ask someone I care about to stay.

What if they’re faking? What if they only tolerate me because they have to?

I can’t stomach just thinking about it.

There are times when I’ve wished to live like l’homme de la nature et de la vérité, but like the Underground Man, I’ve utterly and eternally cursed myself with the indelible habit of overthinking. Trop lucide pour être heureux.

I tell myself I deserve gentleness, that I’m capable of being loved without earning it. Yet the moment it’s offered, I recoil. I call it honesty, or independence, but it’s really just me not wanting to admit that I’m scared.

That’s my problem. Believing I’m worthy of good things while behaving like I’m not. I build entire philosophies around healing, then flinch when peace actually starts to take shape. I mistake discomfort for depth, chaos for proof that I’m still alive.

What the fuck am I doing?

Maybe nothing Rousseau or Dostoevsky didn’t already write about.

The worst part is that I am aware of it, and yet I do nothing to change. I guess this is healthy, writing about it. But does it even matter? What will this do for me? Let people know how miserable I am? Whatever.

Maybe it’s just another way of saying what I never could. Maybe this is what it feels like to love too late. To finally realise what I’ve wanted to say only when the moment’s already gone.

Overthinking makes a home in my body. It crawls under my skin, rewrites every small interaction, and tells me that I’m too much. It convinces me that detachment is wisdom.

Je me détruis en silence. I try to read every tone, every pause, every look for signs of rejection. It’s pathetic, the way I dissect warmth as if it’s a trap. I turn kindness into a test, and silence into proof that I was right to expect the worst.

For some reason, I thought staying silent would spare me, but all it did was keep me untouched and unloved in equal measure.

I used to think it made me noble, that withholding emotion was proof of restraint. That’s what I wanted — to appear composed, untouched, unreachable. But what is composure if it’s just cowardice with better posture? I’ve learned that silence doesn’t protect love; it starves it. Everything I refused to say is now rotting in the back of my head, and when I finally try to speak, there’s nothing left but fragments of sentences that used to mean something, now stripped of their urgency.

Sometimes I imagine what would’ve happened if I had just said it. The confession, the apology, the truth. Maybe nothing would’ve changed. Maybe it still would’ve fallen apart. But at least then I’d have lost something real.

There’s a particular cruelty in regret: knowing the words existed once, right there on your tongue, and you chose to swallow them.

Silence felt easier because it asked for nothing. No risk, no rejection, no proof. But that’s the trap, isn’t it?? You end up worshipping your own restraint until it becomes your religion. You learn to measure love by how well you can hide it. You tell yourself it’s control, but really, it’s a slow disappearance. A habit of surviving instead of living.

Now, when I look back, I realise it wasn’t nobility. It was just self-preservation at the cost of real connection. I built a whole identity out of restraint, and all it left me with was the idea of what might’ve been said, still heavy in my chest.

Anyway, I’m just being dramatic.

I really don’t know how to end this properly. And now I’m overthinking the ending too! How poetic of me. My brain is completely fried.

So, like… bye, I guess? ˙𐃷˙

// while writing this, spotify DJ randomly started playing homebdy by DEMI and it was very funny ‘cause I was going thru it. it’s so catchy, go listen to it

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Scientists call it stellar nucleosynthesis. The process that turns the universe’s chaos into life.

Inside the cores of stars, gravity and heat work together in an endless forge, fusing simple elements like hydrogen and helium into heavier ones like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron. Each fusion releases light and energy, the same light that has travelled across space for millions of years to reach our eyes. When these stars grow old and die, they explode, scattering those elements across the universe. From that dust and debris, new worlds are born. Our planet, our bodies, our memories are all recycled fragments of something once burning and immense.

You can read a simplified explanation of it here.

It humbles me to know that creation isn’t a single event but a constant process of transformation. Even in destruction, the universe makes room for life to begin again.

It’s so strange to think that everything I am — every thought, every heartbeat, every dream — once existed as fire and light in some distant corner of space. I feel infinite yet so small.

If everything we are is temporary, does anything truly matter?

I think the answer depends on every person. Some people find comfort in believing that their lives are part of a greater plan. Others accept the silence of the universe and still choose to live beautifully within it.

I believe that meaning isn’t something we’re given, but something we build. Something we build from our emotions and experiences. From love and pain and all the small moments that make us feel alive.

The stars don’t care whether we exist, but we do. That should be enough.

“You, my love, are allowed to rot and to die and to live again, more alive and incandescent than before.”

— Jeff Buckley, New Year’s Eve Prayer

That’s basically what we are as people. Just like the stars, we fall apart and begin again. Each version of ourselves burning out then reigniting, carrying a little more light every time.

Meaning is something we can keep rediscovering each time we rise again. We find it in the quiet nights we spend alone, deciding whether we should keep going, in the warmth of someone’s hand, in the laughter that always fades.

We create meaning when we love, learn, and forgive. Isn’t it beautiful that we can look up at the infinite every day and every night, and still choose to care?

Every choice, no matter how small, becomes an act of defiance against the emptiness that is all of creation. Proof that even knowing how fragile we are, we still have the courage to reach for meaning.

Meaning doesn’t need to be perpetual to be real. Life is precious because it ends, because moments fade, and nothing lasts forever. Every second passes and becomes something else, yet that doesn’t erase its worth. To exist, to move, to breathe, even briefly, is enough.

Writing this, I think of the song “All Things End” by Hozier (because apparently, I can’t go five minutes without mentioning Hozier)

“And just knowin’ that everything will end

Should not change our plans when wе begin again”

Everything ends, but that doesn’t make things meaningless. It gives shape to what came before. The stars burned out so we could exist, and one day we’ll return to them. Not as who we are now, but as what we’ve always been made of. The cycle will continue, creating new worlds from what the previous ones left behind.

Permanence isn’t staying the same, it’s becoming part of everything else, and it’s the only absolute thing the universe allows.

But anyway, goodnight!