I spent the entire day pacing between rooms, taking the same steps over and over again, trying to find the right words for something that felt larger than language.

Every time I thought I understood what this essay was about, it became something else.

I started with a favourite colour. Then a flight. Then my grandmother. Then grief.

What I didn’t expect was to discover that I had been writing about change all along.

The ending wasn’t planned. It arrived while I was writing it.

Perhaps that’s why I needed to write this piece in the first place.

To learn something I couldn’t have known before putting these words on the page.

If my writing speaks to you, makes you feel less alone, or offers solace for a burden you have been carrying, please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you are in a position to do so.

I chose to keep this essay free despite the time, care, and emotional labour that went into writing it because I believe healing travels through stories. Some lessons become easier to carry when we realise we are not carrying them alone.

Your support helps me continue creating and sharing work like this.

Thank you for reading.

With love always,

Imi

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One of the most difficult decisions I made was choosing my favourite colour when I was torn between blue and green.

I kept asking other people which choice would best align with a future I couldn’t foresee because being a perfectionist convinced me that every choice was permanent.

Wanting everything to unfold exactly as I pictured it turned the present into a currency that I traded to outsmart the unknown.

It taught me to demand certainty, pushing me to search endlessly for the perfect fit.

To map every hour.

To script every possibility.

To know how each day would unfold.

As if planning could make life behave.

Underneath it all was the fear living with regret.

I kept seeking reassurance from others to avoid facing disappointment later.

I wonder what my life would have been like if I had questioned others with the same intensity that I questioned myself.

If I had trusted myself with the same certainty that I trusted other people.

Instead, I considered, then reconsidered, every alternative until my intuition no longer made sense.

One day, my sister and I sat on our balcony, and my gaze drifted to the turquoise sea meeting the blue sky across the horizon, when my sister asked:

“Which one feels the most like you?”

I chose blue without knowing what choosing myself meant.

Twenty years later, I realise I should have spent much more time with the question.

I spent most of my life craving answers that never saved me, but instead flattened the wild, living pages of my life into a single diagnosis.

Being diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 24 was the kind of future I would never have imagined, even if I had tried to solve the equation by inviting every unknown my mind could think of.

Earlier this week, on Thursday, I realised I was running out of my medication. I booked my flight to Turkey the next day, thinking that I could kill two birds with one stone by also surprising my sister on the weekend she was going to introduce her in-laws to our family.

While I was on my way to the airport, a phone call from a lawyer raised the subtle possibility that I might lose the life I had built in the UK.

As I waited through a two-hour flight delay, I found myself thinking about how certain I had once been that moving back to London would be a continuation of the horror series I had already endured during my master’s at Reading.

What followed was something I didn’t entirely expect.

I felt at home in London.

It was the only place where I could simply be without feeling pressured to arrive at a conclusion.

Every loss I had experienced helped shape the woman I am proud to be when I finally found a place that freed me from expectations.

The possibility of losing that place threw me into my familiar hell as I forced myself to predict the future, to hold tomorrow like a polished stone in my palms.

Surrounded by clouds and thousands of feet above the ground, the only solace I could find was blurring my helplessness with a large glass of white wine. My gaze widened with a hunger for escape as hostesses walked down the aisle until I was served two small bottles of wine.

By attempting to avoid the present, I only strengthened my despair when I found myself in tears as the earth darkened and blue turned to black. I realised I was grieving not the past but the possibility of arriving at a life I no longer wanted to be a part of.

To a self I had outgrown after spending my life between almost giving up and almost choosing myself.

Seeking relief, I surrendered to sleep, expecting to wake up refreshed when my plane landed.

I didn’t.

Instead, I fought with my parents as we rode home from the airport because I expected my mother to reassure me about the outcome of my visa, while another possibility of loss surged through me when I saw how much weight she had lost.

My mother called me silly. My father told me it was 4 a.m. My stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten.

No one told me that everything was going to be okay.

The next day, I woke up around 10 a.m. and rushed to my sister’s room, where I was met with her shock and happiness. We shared a long hug until I saw my grandmother lying on the bed, her gaze searching the ceiling.

She looked oblivious.

I approached her, thinking she would be happy to see me.

She was happy to see someone.

She wasn’t happy because it was me.

I kept talking, filling the room with stories and questions, waiting for something familiar to return. I hoped the person I remembered would answer when music called, expecting she would clap while a smile spread across her face like it used to.

Before I played one of my poems that I had turned into a song, I changed my clothes because I knew she wouldn’t want me bringing the dirty streets into her bed when I sat next to her.

Back in her youth, she would wash money notes and hang them out to dry on the balcony of her former house. Whenever a dog passed by on the pavement across the road, she would go home and wash her entire body.

I found myself searching for traces of that woman in the one sitting before me.

As the melody spread through the room, she looked up.

Her eyes met mine.

Her lips parted as she said:

“What is your name?”

I hoped it was a joke, that her greatest talent, acting, was at play. One of my favourite bedtime stories from my mother was about how my grandmother could imitate every person she met better than they could imitate themselves.

“Come on, Grandma, stop joking. You know it’s me. Imi.”

Heat began to rise in my cheeks. My eyes strained against the water, trying to force its way down them.

I turned my head away, still hoping.

“Do you really not remember my name?”

I turned back toward her and met her blank stare, then left the room shortly afterwards, telling her I would be back, covering my face with my palm as I felt the wetness on my cheeks.

Walking on autopilot toward the bathroom to splash water on my face and cool the fire rising within me, I noticed a bird’s nest on the windowpane.

A pigeon sat on her eggs, her spindly legs folded beneath her like something both fragile and certain.

She seemed to already understand that change was part of staying.

Then another pigeon flew in, slowly folded its wings, and waited on the edge beside the nest.

A minute passed before I noticed a movement that spread like a vibration, signalling the end of one bird’s turn protecting the new life waiting to begin inside the eggs.

The pigeon’s spindly legs moved slowly toward the opposite edge.

Its wings spread.

Then it flew.

Turning my gaze back to the nest, I saw the other pigeon already taking its turn, sheltering and giving warmth to what had not yet been born.

Nothing disappeared.

Only transformed.

The pigeon seemed to understand something I had spent years resisting:

Change does not mean loss.

My grandmother, who once clapped while we danced, still existed somewhere inside the woman who asked me my name.

My sister was becoming someone’s wife without becoming any less my sister.

My mother was becoming older without becoming any less than the person who held our family together with compassion.

Even the future I feared when I moved to London introduced me to versions of myself I never knew were possible.

Perhaps the future carried the same possibility: not of becoming what I feared, but of becoming something better than I could imagine.

Perhaps the opposite of fear was never certainty.

It was trust.

Standing there, looking out at the Mediterranean, I finally understood why I chose blue all those years ago.

The sea shifted with the tide. The sky darkened when the evening arrived.

Yet even when the world turned away from the sun, the sky did not forget how to be blue.

Blue was never asking me to hold on.

It was asking me to travel where the light had gone.

It was teaching me how to let go.

How to watch the sky change colour and still call it home.

How to believe in love that survives every transformation.

For the first time, I realised that what I favoured was never the thing that stayed.

It was the thing I carried with me after they changed.

If you’re someone who feels deeply and refuses to stay unseen, this is probably the best place to begin:

I’ve joined plenty of lives as a guest before, but hosting my own felt different. It was scary, exciting, and surprisingly healing all at once.

And it brings me so much joy knowing this is only the beginning.

Beyond the Page with Imi is a new paid subscriber benefit created to shine a light on the remarkable people who make this community what it is.

Each week, I’ll be inviting a paid subscriber to join me for a live conversation. We’ll talk about ideas, experiences, projects, creativity, psychology, relationships, and whatever else feels alive in the moment.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, entrepreneur, psychologist, creator, or simply someone with a story to tell, this is an opportunity to share your work, your ideas, and your perspective with both this community and the wider Substack ecosystem.

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For my friend, who taught a wolf
what the moon had known all along.

For every woman who refused to dim her light to soothe a wounded ego.

May you never mistake being pursued for being seen.

The silver-burning queen does not shine
because she is chosen.

She shines because she is.

With love always,

- imi

Through the whistle and the storm,
a man was born among wolves,
his prophecy written
on a night marked by the absence
of the full moon.

The wolves wanted revenge
for their howl that once owned the night,
for their howl that disappeared
into the void
when the silver-haired woman of the night
withheld her glow from the sky.

Wolves pledged,
a pack bound by blood,
sacrificing the newborn,
his prophecy naming him the chosen one.

Red took over his brown eyes
as he vowed to take back the glory
that had turned into a joke overnight.

The day arrived.
The sun rose anew.

The wolves tucked their tails,
begging the Lord of Dawn
for a touch of his warmth
to turn the chosen wolf
into a beast
that appears both as man
and in its four-legged form.

The Celestial King declined
until the wolves whispered,

“What if the golden light
became the only glory
that held the sky?”

Tails rose upward,
faces wearing the shape
of an uncanny smile.

As the first rays of dawn
crept into the cave,
a messenger arrived.

Through the wind came an envelope,
carrying the fire
of the fire-crowned man.

The dawn broke.

The wolf form began to recede,
fur withdrawing into skin,
the muzzle shortening
into a human face.

Yet the chosen one’s eyes
remained red.

Vengeance stayed,
alongside his tail,
anger and rage.

The cave withdrew into itself.

Its stones did not welcome
the child
when he tucked
his tail inward.

The night arrived once more,
and lust began to take form
while he called himself

“The Serial Love Bomber.”

He threw himself into the night,
wrapped in the arms
of women he fooled.

The storms brought
hails of compliments.

His words spoke of home,
until the first light of day
turned him into a ghost.

The Keeper of Tides,
of blood and return,
whispered to the stars
to watch closely.

Stars lit one by one,
until the darkness
that wrapped every corner
like a blanket
was gone.

On the second fortnight
of the Shallow Dawn,
the act began.

The Serial Love Bomber,
unaware
that he was being watched.

He met a woman
when doors forgot
which side they belonged to.

She watched closely,
fishing for depth,
only to find conversations
stranded on the shore,

while silence followed
shortly after each time
she answered,

“Hey, how are you?”

His whispers began to unfold.

“A day without you
is a season gone missing.”

The woman asked in return,

“When is my birthday?”

Only to be met by silence,
followed by a smile.

Then his lips parted,
and he said,

“Forgive me.
Your beauty distracted my focus.”

The woman winked
at the Night’s Quiet Queen
as she brushed him aside,
stealing a treasure
from the Serial Love Bomber
that never knew he possessed.

The real love story began
when she became friends
with a girl she met through him.

Night turned into laughter.
Time stretched with songs
that they danced together,
while the woman was served
with the kindness
of another gentleman.

Until her smile was erased
by two red dots
that revealed themselves
around the corner.

Shattered, the Serial Love Bomber
pulled away his friend,
turning her night into a game,
forcing her to play escapism,

while contempt became his language
toward the woman
he had never considered dating.

Insults began floating through the air,
intoxicated by his broken ego,
a venom carried by his hatred
toward a woman
who introduced him to rejection.

The Serial Love Bomber cursed the woman,
forbidding his friend
from ever seeing her again.

Yet the two women remained friends,
their laughter flourishing
in the soil
of soul-level recognition.

While the Serial Love Bomber
spent his life studying
how to make people feel chosen.

The wolves taught him
how to chase.

The Lord of Dawn
taught him how to shine.

Until a woman taught him

that the silver-burning queen
does not dim her light
for a Serial Love Bomber.

She only burns clearer.

If my writing speaks to you and if you’re in the position do to so, becoming a paid subscriber helps me keep creating from a place of depth, experimentation, and emotional honesty.

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If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I create custom songs for my paid subscribers.

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If you wonder how my voice sounds like check out these posts:

About modern intimacy, disappearing messages, meet-cutes, and the strange exhaustion of being almost chosen.

About identity, exhaustion, hopelessness, forcefulness, and the fear of becoming nobody.

If you’re someone who feels deeply and refuses to stay unseen, this is probably the best place to begin:

Beyond the Page with Imi is a new paid subscriber benefit that I hope to shine a light on the remarkable people in this community.

Each week, I’ll invite a paid subscriber to join me for a live conversation. We’ll talk about ideas, experiences, projects, creativity, psychology, relationships, and whatever else feels alive in the moment.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, entrepreneur, psychologist, creator, or simply someone with a story to tell, this is an opportunity to share your ideas and work with both this community and the wider Substack ecosystem.

Anyone can watch, join the chat, ask questions, and be part of the conversation.

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow, June 10th at 1 PM EST, for my very first live show as a host, alongside my wonderful co-host !

Imi’s note

This is not simply a poem.

It’s an immersive experience, an invitation to step into the sky and join the conversation between the Sun and the Moon.

I spent the entire day creating the seven-minute video you’re about to watch, carefully bringing this story to life frame by frame. I do it with so much heart because I’m deeply in love with creativity, and exploring it in all its forms is one of the greatest joys of my life. Paid subscriptions help sustain this level of depth, experimentation, and presence. They allow me to keep creating pieces like this and to continue pushing the boundaries of what storytelling can become.

If you enjoy work like this, I, imi, also create custom song-poems and videos for paid subscribers, tailored to the themes, stories, and emotions that matter most to you. Each one receives the same care, attention, and creative energy that I pour into my own work.

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Left, italics: the Sun, PancakeSushi

Right, bold: the Moon, imi

From a dawn, long ago
I watched
In remote reserve from my celestial perch

An august presence
A venerable source of life and light
The axis for a host of subordinates
Shepherd, to a flock of adherents
With only this lonely fire for shelter

A swirl of dust, turning in a dance
In thrall to me
Growth followed my gaze
Wherever it lay

Warmth and bounty ensued
Flowers bloomed, faces turned to me
In adoration of my majestic form

Eyes gazed upward, every creature awed
Seeking my light

You were ever the opposite
Aloof and pale
My own reflection
Showing the secrets of the night
Chasing ‘round, in cycles
We vie, for our place in the sky

The earth darkened
and the clouds pulled their curtains,
leaving me without your warmth,
while the city beneath the stars
glowed across the horizon,

I escaped to the shadows,
swollen by the night sky,
begging Death to learn my name,
only to be met by silence in return.

The night started humming.
A melody spread through whispers.

It unfolded a map, as large as my fist,
like my heart,
which was never broken,
only lit
by a fire
that slowly turned to venom.

Blame placed itself
upon my sickle-shaped surface,
my light reduced
when the very first sliver
reflected your borrowed light,

much like dawn on the winter solstice,
emanating a promise
of longer days to come.

Yet I still stayed,
paced the same steps,
walked to remember,
hurt by every touch in return,

until the night revealed my tears
as my name became foreign
in the mouth of sleep,

until you rose,

leaving the empty sky
to fill with a blood-orange horizon,
the kind that reveals so much
while hiding even more.

I greeted you like a lover
who has much more to say
but only retreats to their corner
and gave back the Earth to you

I am the aegis, braced against the storms
Darkness crashing at the gates
At the furthest reaches of my light

A cold vast where my warmth is neither seen nor felt
Yet I am there

Radiance dimmed by distance
Only another twinkle in a carpet of dark
Lost, in a scatter of stars

And you, always afar
A cautious courier for the tides
The distant silver sentry of night

Guardian of slumber
Cradling sleepers gently
Who sweeps away the dusky hues
Of night

Bartering with the bruised skies
Between summit and set
An argent eye in the dark
Turning your shoulder to me

Or standing in a shadow cast
Your electrum face shaded
While you trace a path
A lonely stroll, between shadow and light

Calling me not to rise,
but to remain,
to study closely
every thread of pain,
while the ache of your absence
made me whole again.

When seemingly every corner of the earth
was crawling with life,
I woke each day to brilliant light,
yet cursed the shadows,
completely oblivious to the warmth
that keeps the frost at bay.

As Spring began to unfold,
I pulled the tides,
no longer keeping them
gathered in a corner,

much like the glow
that rose from a star
and found its home
upon a surface
that had always been a mirror,

while people kept searching
for that beauty
in places
it never belonged.

The foliage grew lush
and green through summer,
while I surrendered
my colour to amber,

and the night sky glowed
for a fleeting season,
until darkness retrieved
its rightful place,

I died back,
turning into black.

I watched your patient purpose,

Sowing the seas with tide and ebb,
Tugging at the shores,
Calling them back into the warp of the waters.

And I knew the unfolding days
Would watch the Earth flourish under your care.

But the toil wearied you so,
That I longed to soften the harsh glare
Boiling out of me,

To lift the weight from your arms,
And bring you shade
Where your amble ended,

to the lips that learned to place
the smile I had long erased
back where it belonged,
binding together
all that was meant to shine,
moving endlessly
between dusk and dawn.

Audio by Suno

I

heard

of you

through
word of mouth,

as nothing

more than a myth.

I had no proof

of you,

so I waited.

I

felt

you

when my tears
trailed down my cheeks.
I mistook their wetness
for the sound of laughter
that was supposed to enter
through my ears.

I

spoke

of you

when we stood beneath the sky,
watching the stars
until they disappeared
in Çanakkale,
as I left, unaware
that you ran after me.

I

had

a glimpse

of you

when I met my twin from another gender
during the summer of eighth grade,

as we laughed
after we won that card game
and you tucked me under your arm,

while I didn’t want to be your twin.
I just wanted to be yours.

I

tasted

you

on New Year’s Eve
when I walked in on you
while you were getting dressed.
Then our lips touched.

Embarrassment lingered on my tongue.

I

found

you

on a boat
anchored on the Aegean shore,

while I became drunk,
frightened of losing sight of you.

You held your breath
close to my neck,
explaining the constellations
as we fell asleep on a net
under the stars that glowed

until the day you looked at me,
while your eyes
no longer knew my name.

I

hurt

you

when my hands held that can of Coke

instead of yours
at the top of a mountain,
as I danced with you,
my face wearing a smile
while my knees were covered
in bruises,
telling you I was tired
when you found a cave for us
to take refuge in.

We looked at the shapes
that were carved on the ceiling
until the first lights
waged war on my eyelids,
as I turned around,

shocked to find
you were still there.

I

spent

time

with you

for longer than a year
while you played your video games
and watched my forehead
grow wrinkled.

Time slowed down
as I stayed there longer
than I should have.

I

betrayed

you

when I did not dare wake up
without you wishing me a good morning,
pulling the night closer,
whispering for it to stay longer,

while my body moved with a flow
it was never taught to follow.

I

waited

for you

when you asked me
if you could finish your cigarette.

Your lips curled upward

while nothing remained
besides the sorrow that rose from
the future
that was never meant to be ours.

I

hated

you

when you rotted
like the roses
I kept staring at
during those cold winter nights,

while the thought of you
arrived with a smile

that surged panic through me,
realising that I was only
a body to you.

I

cried

for you

when I stood in that alley,
on the corner of the sidewalk
closest to the road,
as I leaned against a lamp post
when I said you didn’t have to wait for me.

You didn’t.

I lay there
without you,

holding my breath like a lie,
the ceiling bent slowly
as it watched me try,
gathering what had sparked
and disappeared.

The sheets remembered shapes
I could not keep,
brief but unmistakable.

I

wonder

now,

will you only remain

a myth,

or can I release the fear
of losing hope

for you

to be

love?

did I ever

know

you?

Author’s note

If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I create custom songs for my paid subscribers.

Personal songs and spoken pieces shaped around their writing, and upon sung by me.

Subscribe now

If you wonder how my voice sounds like check out these posts:

About modern intimacy, disappearing messages, meet-cutes, and the strange exhaustion of being almost chosen.

When every version of yourself feels distant, do you ever ask if they were ever you?

About identity, exhaustion, hopelessness, forcefulness, and the fear of becoming nobody.

If you’re someone who feels deeply and refuses to stay unseen, this is probably the best place to begin:

Beyond the Page with Imi is a new paid subscriber benefit that I’m genuinely excited about. One of my biggest hopes is to shine a light on the remarkable people in this community.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, entrepreneur, psychologist, creator, or simply someone with a story to tell, this is an opportunity to share your ideas and work with both this community and the wider Substack ecosystem.

Each week, I’ll invite a paid subscriber to join me for a live conversation. We’ll talk about ideas, experiences, projects, creativity, psychology, relationships, and whatever else feels alive in the moment.

Anyone can watch, join the chat, ask questions, and be part of the conversation.

You can also support me through:

Buy Me a Coffee

I’ve been carrying this piece around with me all day.

Not because it was difficult to write, but because some stories resist being reduced to a neat lesson. They ask to be understood before they can be told.

Every time I thought I was finished, another memory surfaced. Another connection appeared. Another uncomfortable truth asked to be included.

What started as a reflection on “Good Girl Syndrome” became a story about childhood, belonging, self-worth, and the strange ways we learn to disappear in order to be loved.

I poured a lot of thought into this one.

I hope it finds the people who need it.

If my writing speaks to you, becoming a paid subscriber helps me continue creating from a place of depth and truth. It may seem like a small gesture, but it sustains the quiet work behind every word you read here, and maybe something even bigger in the future.

Please help my dreams come true.

Because if I could write all day, every day, I’d do it with joy.

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Think of birth as the opening sentence of a very long novel.

Then ask yourself: What would I expect from its first chapter?

To set the tone for the rest of the story.

In literature, that is called front-loading.

In reality, that is called childhood trauma.

The problem is that our earliest chapters rarely stay where they were written.
The past doesn’t disappear.

It stays where it is, finding its way into everything we do.

Identity takes different shapes, slipping into places we don’t question. The beliefs we adopt without realising force us into roles without our noticing.

My story started writing itself long before I could understand disappointment, when I learned what it felt like to be one.

Being a girl didn’t stop my father from loving me more than anyone else in this world, while he wholeheartedly wished to have a son.

He gave everything he could for me to have the perfect life.

Yet, that perfection worked reciprocally.

For me to have it, I had to be perfect too.

My mind carved emotional blueprints that taught me to measure myself against an impossible scale, forcing me to constantly prove that I was good enough to be accepted.

Suppression felt like a rescue when I learned crying was a weakness in my father’s eyes. He kept telling me that I should be strong, someone respectable in societal terms.

Sensitivity is celebrated in poetry and punished in practice.

I wasn’t a poet back then.

I was a child in a fractured world, trying to find where I belonged while the cost of it meant silencing myself.

As I grew up, my sisters constantly fought. I was expected to take sides while still showing up for both of them when they weren’t speaking. An extra five minutes with either of them meant being punished.

Learning how to read rooms and mediate the environment turned me into a people pleaser. I became perfectly conflict-avoidant.

I’m not sure that was the kind of perfect my father had in mind.

Still, I spent years trying to live up to it.

In first grade, an essay I wrote won a competition.

On the morning of the announcement, I stood there, eyes full of hope, expecting to be announced as the winner.

Then I heard another name.

Everything inside me sank for a moment.

It was another boy from my class, while my teacher had already informed me that I had won.

I looked up at my teacher and met his gaze. It told me to wait.

My name was announced shortly after.

I was forced to share my first place with someone who didn’t deserve it because my father owned the school.

Somehow, the injustice became a way of restoring justice.

Peace is earned through corruption.

The sad part wasn’t the lack of recognition I received.

It was the relief I felt at not receiving it.

I learned that hiding yourself makes you chosen.

Later that year, I solved a maths equation correctly, and my teacher gave me a sticker. Not long after, the smile that came with the sticker turned into tears when I got picked on by a classmate because I was the daughter of the school’s owner.

Not someone smart enough to solve an equation correctly.

Learnings that didn’t ask permission to stay built themselves into the walls of my nervous system, turning into a rhythm over time while I kept waiting to be acknowledged.

Praise seemed to only arrive when I was agreeable.

Well-behaved

Helpful.

Self-sacrificing.

Mature for my age

High-achieving.

Leaving me with no other option but to unconsciously develop what many now call:
“Good Girl Syndrome.”

On the outside, the “good girl” seems low-maintenance.

On the inside, she is much sadder.

She believes that she’s not enough to deserve anything good and too much to be loved completely.

Placing the happiness of others above my own became my identity, and I started showing up for everyone, even when it wasn’t expected.
I felt responsible for everyone else’s emotions, while I rarely voiced my own.
At the same time, I invented burdens in my mind, countless and undefined, as I believed that love existed not through continuity, but through repair.

It was not me speaking.

It was my wound.

During my bachelor’s, I had a very close friend that’d text me at random times of the day saying,
“I love you so much.”

One day, during finals, in front of the library, she gave me a hateful, piercing stare that shattered me into pieces and immediately spiralled my mind into self-blame.

I went over to her desk at the library, knelt down to look directly into her gaze, and leaned my head onto her table. When I was able to convince her to tell me what her problem was, I was shocked.

She said she didn’t trust me because I got along with everyone.

That I was neutral. Too political.

That was the first time a quiet truth I refused to face started to shape itself below the surface.

People will always find a reason to be displeased.

I only stopped negotiating with that reality when my body stopped negotiating with me. Until everything started falling apart when I woke up with a random ache in my foot one morning during my master’s in England.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine was coming to visit from Dublin. He wanted to go out and party in London while I was crying whenever I tried to make my way to the toilet because of the pain.

I didn’t tell him how badly it was hurting.

I took MDMA.

It erased the pain. Until the next day.

Then I found myself in a wheelchair at Heathrow Airport, boarding a flight to Turkey.

Everything started falling apart when a series of events turned into a domino effect and flushed my life down the toilet until I had nothing left but to suspend my degree for a year.

I couldn’t prioritise others’ happiness while I couldn’t even fake a smile.

My health could no longer afford to be an overachiever. Not someone sociable.

I was stripped of every version of myself that I knew.

I stood there with nothing to hold on to.

No idea when the storm will pass, no sense of direction, no way of knowing if you’ll ever return to what you left behind or if it will even be there.

I went to hell and back, and when it lifted, the experiences life handed me forced me to break the shape I was in.

Things never went back to the way they were.

I never went back to the way I was.

I stopped worshipping the possibility of being seen and began seeing myself beyond the fantasy of what could have been.

What life came to teach me in the end was how to loosen my grip on longing and stop searching for a home in other people before learning how to live in my own.

Love changes.

People leave.

Belonging shifts.

Truth looks different depending on where we stand.

The only question is whether we still allow the first chapter to write the rest of our story, or to pick up the pen ourselves.

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Author’s note:

Before you read, I want to tell you something.

This piece required me to sit with truths I would have preferred to outrun.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure I would share it at all.

I wrote it anyway and chose to share it for free, like most of my work, because I believe stories are meant to travel. Sometimes they help us understand each other. Sometimes they help us understand ourselves.

If this piece stays with you after you’ve finished reading it, if you find a part of yourself somewhere inside these words, I hope you’ll consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Writing has given me a way to transform some of the hardest parts of my life into something that can reach another person and make them feel less alone. Every subscription helps me keep doing that.

We are all carrying things we rarely speak about. This essay is one of mine.

And if you’ve ever found comfort, recognition, hope, or companionship in my words, thank you for being here. It means more than you know.

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For most of my life, my Focus and Pleasure Districts have had a bit of a wiring problem. The roads were there, but the fuel trucks did not always deliver enough dopamine.

My brain was wired for constant stimulation.

I remember when I was a little girl, whenever I had a good time, I would ask my mom what we were going to do next.
Her answer was always the same:
“Aren’t you enjoying this moment?”
Mine was too:
“Yeah, but… what’s next?”

When I watched a good movie, I couldn’t stay with the story; my thoughts jumped ahead, reminding me it was going to end soon.

When my sisters came home from college to visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that they’d have to leave again.

Even when I had a meal I really enjoyed, I would think about the dissatisfaction I’d feel once it was over. That’s why, when I started smoking, it helped me enjoy my food in peace, knowing there was still a spark of excitement waiting on the other side.

Smokers will know, there’s nothing quite like a cigarette after a good meal.

Still, all good feelings were shadowed by how afraid I was of their ending.

Later, I learned to go looking for fuel myself, chasing exciting ideas, novelty, music, and connection. Anything that could give my districts a quick boost has always been my way of getting the next drop of dopamine.

My brain naturally moved a little faster and a little sideways compared to everyone else’s, having a tendency toward making small mistakes, being forgetful, and leaving tasks unfinished.

When I was asked something simple like, “Take the trash out, then finish your homework,” the trash bag rustled, reminding me of the kitchen, then yesterday’s meal, the stove that cooked it, and finally the quiet wonder of how humans first discovered fire.

School was no different. I was never able to focus on any of my classes.

My hands were never able to stay steady. I’d always scribble some notes or draw some figures somewhere.

I was also somewhat of a naughty kid. If the teacher wasn’t too strict, I’d often disrupt the classroom environment, talking to my peers.

In the end, they divided our class into three to separate me from my close friends.

Each time, I’d gather myself, give a rally, do a little pep talk that revolved around, “Focus on the lesson.”

During the first five, and if I’m lucky then the first ten minutes, I wouldn’t even flinch as I listened to my teacher. My gaze, firm and steady, fixated on the board until something small, like a leaf falling down from a tree, grabbed my attention.

That was all it took for me to enter a world where I entertained myself with fantasies, wandered through scenes that shifted like silk. It was as if I was dreaming while my eyes were open, only until I heard my teacher saying:

“Class dismissed.”

Only then would I realise that what felt like five minutes to me was actually an hour.

I wasn’t the kind of student who learned her lessons in the classroom. Not because of my lack of understanding but of attention.

I never understood why we needed to be taught in school for eight hours straight since most of mine went by daydreaming. My grasp was quick. I only needed an hour of studying each day during the exam week to catch up with my peers.

I envied those who were homeschooled, but whenever I took that argument to my mother, her statement was rock solid:

“I can never handle your energy if you spent the entire day at home. You got your peers at school.”

ADHD is not an either-or kind of condition. Your attention is deficit AND you’re hyperactive.

During my bachelor’s, I was on the verge of flunking every single class. I didn’t spare at least a bit of my time for studying while classroom hours were already going to waste. The rest of my time went to making new friends and partying until I forced myself onto a structured studying schedule.

Upon my graduation, my attention deficit didn’t make much difference in my life. If anything, it made me more colourful.

I kept jumping around, singing, swirling, being chatty for no reason. Stopping to smell the roses along the way was my kind of living.

I found happiness in little details that people tend to overlook.
My imagination created entire worlds when this one felt like it had nothing new to offer.

Even then, my brain looked for reasons to undo my joy. It tried to take the happiness away just as it was the one that created it in the first place.
The core of my power had always been the core of my issues too.

A year later, I started my master’s in Clinical Psychology at the University of Reading.

When I finally settled down and made a group of friends and returned from Turkey after the Christmas break, everything started falling apart when I woke up with a random ache in my foot.

At first, I brushed it off and didn’t give it a rest out of my fear of missing out. Instead of giving it care, I became its terrain, forcing its limits far beyond what it could take.

When the pain became unbearable, I found myself in a wheelchair at Heathrow Airport, boarding a flight to Turkey.

When I was told my foot was fractured, I had to spend two and a half months of my year abroad in Istanbul while all my course friends shared memories that I could only watch through social media.

I was so excited to come back, thinking that I could pick up where I left off, while the universe, on the other hand, had something else in store.

Three days after my return, I was admitted to hospital due to a kidney infection. After five days I got discharged, hoping that everything would go back to being normal.

I did not know that severe infections worsened neurological conditions, until the Movement District started running out of fuel too.

This time, the problem was not with the roads that carried the fuel. It was one of the city’s main fuel factories quietly shutting down.

Unfortunately, the head of this district did not manage to keep the factories running to postpone the collapse by at least 30 to 40 years.

I couldn’t agree more with John Lennon when I heard the oldest phrase in the book that said, “Life is what you get when you were busy making plans,” when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 24.

The breakdown came too early, eager to meet me when I had only lived one third of my life.

Ironically, the same chemical I spent my life chasing was the chemical my brain was losing.

ADHD and Parkinson leave fingerprints on dopamine.

My ADHD brain wanted to move in a thousand directions at once.

Parkinson’s forced my body to move in none of them.

Both conditions seemed to haunt the same neighbourhoods of my brain, writing two very different stories with the same ink.

My movements started to feel deliberate, held back. My muscles became firm, as if they were bracing for something that never quite happened.

Even stillness had tension in it.

I felt fear wrapping around me before I even moved, making me step back before I even tried.

After four months of trying every possible medical intervention, I was prescribed Levodopa that made me feel like my body remembered itself.

Fighting the biggest fear of my life without knowing whether I would survive it introduced me to someone I had not known for twenty-four years.

Someone who was grateful.

I used to think that happiness was lived in whatever came next.

My constant chase for stimulation pulled me toward collecting people, stories, songs, and moments with the enthusiasm of someone who suspected they might disappear.

The next trip.

The next achievement.

The next person.

The next version of me.

There was always room for more.

I didn’t realise how much of my life I was spending one step ahead of myself. How much of it I spent waiting for it to begin.

My ADHD brain forced me to ask, “What’s next?”

Until Parkinson’s started asking, “What is here?”

What I lost wasn’t a future, but the illusion that life was waiting for me somewhere ahead.

The future never arrives as the future. It only arrives as the present.

Conversation, glances, and the tiny collisions where something passes between two people stopped being fleeting moments and started leaving an imprint.

Every shared laugh, every unexpected friendship, every moment of recognition became another landmark in my city.

Every surge of joy, every streak of curiosity that landed deeply became part of the map.

Parkinson’s taught me to see the beauty of the night sky when the power went low.

Without it, I might never have noticed how beautiful my city already was beneath the stars that glowed across the horizon.

Perhaps the ending was never the tragedy.

It was the proof that something beautiful had happened at all.

When something is finite, its present becomes priceless.

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Dear you,

I never told you how much I wanted to do a road trip around the entire world.

I know what you’re going to say. But I’m also not so sure anymore.

Do I even really know you? Is your favourite colour still green? Do you still believe wearing the same pair of socks will bring you bad luck?

I hope you do. That was what got me to follow you to your place on our first date.

I wanted to see your sock collection.

But there are things you don’t know either, like how badly I wanted to call you when I went to my interview. The one you helped me prepare for.

I wore two different socks.

I felt quite ashamed for mocking you when I found out I got the job afterward.

I didn’t want you to lose faith in mismatches.

Then I saw you changed your profile picture.

I couldn’t dare to ask what else might’ve changed in your life.

Maybe it wasn’t changed. Maybe it was replaced.

Maybe I was replaced.

I guess I have to stop asking these questions. Otherwise, I won’t be able to finish this letter without finding myself at the closest pub.

That’s what the idea of not knowing you does to me.

If I don’t know you, then I want to lose myself too.

Then there’s this whole other part where I actually lost you.

Focusing on this trip has been the only thing that gets me going since that day at the bakery.

I remember how the drizzle turned into a storm. How those tiny raindrops first dripped from the tips of your hair, fell onto your face, then became my tears that trailed inward.

I never expected to hear those words from you.

You said you didn’t expect to say them either.

Why did you?

I could only find solace in throwing myself into other unknowns by giving the whole world as my limit.

Even if you have any guesses about where I wanted to start from, I doubt they’d be right.

I stopped being predictable long ago. Or so I try.

Things have changed a lot since you were gone.

When you left, my hopes of having someone who’d be willing to dream with me were gone too.

So I decided to change myself instead of changing my dreams.

The cost of that felt a lot less, considering I had always been too much.

Anyway, I’ve gone off topic.

I thought I learned to resist the urge to tell you my entire stream of thoughts.

You know what it’s like to be inside my mind. You were there quite a lot.

You still take up some space.

Writing this letter felt like the only way to have you somewhere that wasn’t inside of me.

Knowing that you’re here but not really there became unbearable.

I wanted to have you somewhere that I could touch. That I could talk to without thinking that I was going crazy.

Don’t even start saying that it is already crazy of me to think of riding through the world in a car.

I wonder what your reaction would be like when I tell you where I want to head off first.

Now, I expect you to do that thing where you clap your hands on your lap.

No, I won’t call it a drum roll. I told you many times that it is not.

Egypt.

I want to start my road trip around the world from Egypt.

It is the world’s most ancient civilisation.

It was built with the idea of eternity.

Yet its past doesn’t mirror its present.

It didn’t disappear. It just never became what it could’ve become.

That’s how our relationship felt when we fell apart.

As if something existed between us long before we met. Something that cannot be explained.

Like the pyramids.

I never understood how they got there. No one did.

Yet when I try to define it, it somehow falls short of reality.

I think there was a whole other world there long before we built ours.

Then something erased it.

Maybe it was nature. Maybe it was their own nature.

Maybe they were never meant to last, but just to leave a legacy.

Like some people who enter our lives like windows that are not meant to remain open all the time, but to point out a scene that looks beautiful until its season is gone.

Even though you left, our memories will always remind me of our season.

When something is finite, its ending becomes priceless. That’s the beauty of it.

I wonder, is there anything you never told me?

Not those three words. I want the real stuff.

I know you think you’re not creative. I also know how you underestimate yourself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Maybe it’d be better if I did not.

Secretly yours,

Imi

Dear you,

I never told you how much you meant to me. You were my world for a brief period of time. I wanted to move mountains so that you could live in comfort. I would have given you the world if I had the keys

I started learning your language, I started learning about the things you found interest in.

I went to the mall yesterday. I NEVER go to malls on my own. Especially on a nice Saturday. Went to the shoe store you showed me. As much as I feel like I have forgotten about you, you did show me a different side of the world. And I got some sick shoes.

You’d probably call them ugly but I was never the fashionable one.

You refused to see me for who I am

You refused to be who you said you were.

And you refused to take the keys

Yet I still loved you. Maybe it’s because I never loved myself. I don’t really know.

You played me like a fiddle and I was almost broken enough to be willing to take it. I was almost willing to settle for something that was not meant to be.

After years of not being able to endure any sort of relationships, you opened up my world to that possibility again. After years of thinking I wasn’t good enough I found somebody.

Maybe you were the wrong person to chase.

I remember being so nervous on our first date I couldn’t eat. We went to one of those Japanese grills with the raw meats you grill on your table. I remember the table next to us absolutely buzzing, taking shot after shot. I couldn’t even get words out. But we got through it. You thought it was cute. I thought it was embarrassing.

I remember feeling out of your league. A man who lives a simple life out in the country dating a beautiful woman who likes the city.

Relationships are about compromise. But historically men like me do not get along with women like you.

Maybe it wasn’t out of your league, I have lots of value. I know this now

Maybe it was just a different league.

It should have been a sign. You didn’t enjoy the things I enjoyed. You winced at the idea of camping. You didn’t try to understand the things I was passionate about. You just kind of held me like another one of your Gucci accessories.

You have handbags worth more than my truck. After all that is said and done, it should have been clear to me you didn’t want me for me. You wanted my money, my attention. You wanted another Gucci bag that you could adore and tuck away in the closet.

But I thought I knew you. You talked about wanting a family. You talked about wanting to be loved. To be held, to be understood. And I tried to learn about fashion, pop culture. All the things that made me wince.

But I am not sure I ever truly knew who you were. I am not sure you ever really knew who I was either.

You claimed to be a lot of things. You claimed to be catholic, to have all these morals. To be faithful. Was it all a mask?

The first sign should have been when you called me a player. Sure, I have had a couple flings when I was partying. But for context, I really thought I loved those people at the moment. Anxious attachment is a bitch when left unhealed. Looking back, I think that was projection. It was also a severely big lapse in your judgement of character.

I should have left when I drove 7 hours up to see you, and you got all weird and ignored me the entire weekend. That is fine, I hung out with my uncle instead.

At least he responds to texts. You were my girlfriend. We were supposed to be in a relationship.

But I saw so much in you. I saw the good among the bad. I loved something about you

I’m really not sure what it was anymore. The more I choose myself and love myself, the more the thought of choosing you makes me sick

But I wanted to travel with you. I wanted to know what forever was with you.

And the worst part when I left you wasn’t being alone

The worst part was not having anyone to share with. Not having somebody to think about in the morning. To say goodnight to. To share the little things with

Yes, I am the one that broke up with you. I won’t say what you did here, but it was one of those things that isn’t forgivable. One of those things that I thought was beyond you. And you did it more than once.

But I split as soon as I discovered you were using me like that.

It was falling apart already. You would get mad at me over seemingly nothing and leave my texts on read for days. It was clear you did not want me. You wanted my attention. You wanted my care. I sent you a love song, and you said you fucking hated it. I told you the things I loved about you and you said I was lying.

Damn.

After I ended things I had a lot of thoughts. I felt insignificant. I felt like less of a man. I felt dumb for letting myself fall for somebody who clearly wasn’t able to handle a relationship

Maybe I wasn’t able to handle one at that point of my life either.

But in a lot of ways I should be thanking you. After I left you I started to choose myself. I quit smoking weed, and I started working out. I started to actually implement all the reading I had done into my life about healing and loving myself. I learnt that I didn’t need anyone else. Even after thinking I needed you so badly.

I think you would be proud.

Why do I even care?

I would have handed you the world

But you refused to take it

You threw it all away

I hope you’re well and you find what you’re looking for

Sincerely,

Elijah

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The voice you hear in the audio belongs to me.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I create custom songs for my paid subscribers. Personal songs and spoken pieces shaped around their writing, and sung by me.

I met him on
a night equally painful,
when the clouds drew their curtains
and the earth darkened.

His black hair, threaded with subtle greys,
reminded me of the moon
when it was half-bitten,
its borrowed glow covered in fog,
while my eyes searched for an understanding,
I could not restore.

He looked like all the lost potentials
I had once hoped for.

One entering while another exited,
the tiles beneath my feet softened,
preparing the ground for rejection.

He looked like the people
who mocked what I called love.

Yet my pulse kept weakening,
like a bow pulled back to gather momentum
before realising its own force,
doubling its speed,
reaching farther than before.

My feet stood uncertain
of their next move,
the ground beneath them drifting
as his gaze turned toward me
with an abrupt smile.

While the hours moved like water over stone,
forcing me to draw a map
from every outline I had known,
something unfolded quietly within me,
each memory trailing its way
toward my heart,
still only as big as my fist.

It called me not to rise, but to remain,
to study closely
every thread of pain,
as if the ache itself
of those who almost saw me,
who almost chose me,
might make me whole again.

So I stayed still
and let the silence speak,
felt something flicker faintly through the bleak,
not fire, not light,
but something in between,
a ghost of want,
persistent and unseen.

Could I choose myself
not out of fear,
but from the quiet,
thunderous place inside me
that simply wants to give?

Authors note: If my writing speaks to you, becoming a paid subscriber helps me continue creating from a place of depth and truth. It may seem like a small gesture, but it sustains the quiet work behind every word you read here, and maybe something even bigger in the future.

Please help my dreams come true.

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Author’s Note:

You’re about to enter an immersive experience.

We’ve been holding back our second collaboration for a long time now, and while better late than never, we wanted it to be worth the wait.

The audio is entirely sung by us, and , complemented by a homemade video.

(imi: italics, James: bold)

Sub both of us.

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Sub James

Well hello. So nice to see everyone again.
You know us. It’s HVR, though these days, it’s James.
And we all know, imi.

Are we ready, imi?

Did someone summon
a poet into the cypher tonight,
searching for truth in the old neon light?

Bring down the lights.
Shake the floor.
To all the haters?
Watch it burn.

Back where our memories
still seem to stay.
Where laughter and tears
found us night after day.

Strum the chords.
Crank the amps.
Light the fuse.
Let’s get them.

For what once was,
and what could not remain,
for the LOVE that survived
through every change.

Before the wind
sounded different,
there were no other sounds
before everything happened,
we were just particles

of dust,
scattered,
floating,

without shape.

Then
the world returned.

Everything
merged.

Yet

nothing
felt
whole
again.

I
landed
on earth,

yet
the ground
never reached
beneath
my feet.

I didn’t
mind.

I only stood there
somewhere between
never arriving
on a never-ending journey.

The ashes
hung an inch tall
from my cigarette
It turned into fire
and somehow I circled
right back to the flame.

Though it didn’t only burn outside of me,
most of the time
it burned within.

Sometimes it was anger,
rage,
revenge.

At times it was pain,
hope,
and regret.

I didn’t know
which way I wanted to watch my life burn
while time moved like aged wine,
gathering richness line by line.

Days felt rotten.
So did my joy,

It disappeared,

like something once sacred
was never revered.

The fire began tearing through my life,
while flames took everything within.
I gave it a spark at first,
something more to burn.

Until I was consumed by it,
by how much it revealed,
by how much it took away with it.

The self I thought I was,
The self I never got to meet,

The fire consumed all,
pulling at my laughter,
the curiosity carried
by my owl-like eyes,
the beauty within me
that people kept projecting
onto places
it never belonged.

It drained the oxygen,
set everything ablaze,
then spread beyond control.

I tried to extinguish the flame.
Let it die down.

Maybe I thought I had slowed it.

But it was waiting,
gaze drifting,
searching with curiosity
for a farewell that was never meant to return,

only me and my shadow
blurring the light.

Then suddenly,
I was engulfed.

I tried to quiet it,
calm it,
negotiate with it,
plead with it.

Please, stop now.
You’ve taken enough.
You burned through so much.
You win.
I give up.
What else do you need?

But fire doesn’t have a reason.

It simply spreads.
Fast.

One day,
I looked into the mirror
and no longer recognised
what was staring back.

It was my wound, burning inward
until everything around me caught fire.

But I remembered.

Before I was consumed.
Before I turned myself into ashes
Before too much burned away.

Fire doesn’t only destroy.

Fire purifies.

No matter how many sparks flew,
and they will,
oh, they will,
I learned to remain calm
within the smoke and flames.
the clouds pulling their curtains,
as I watched drizzle turn into storm
while the sun rose at the same time.

And there it was.

The blood-orange horizon.

Eyes up in the sky.
I watched the clouds
form into shapes.

Ashes became fire
somewhere between
day and dusk,

and something feathered
stirred in the ash.

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If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I also create custom songs, spoken pieces, and cinematic videos for my paid subscribers. Personal works shaped around their stories, writing, memories, or emotions, all voiced and brought to life by me.

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See how it all began:

The voice you hear in the audio is entirely mine.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I create custom songs for my paid subscribers. Personal songs and spoken pieces shaped around their writing, and sung by me.

Recently, I met a guy I felt like I could fully be myself around. I felt welcomed. Accepted. Maybe even as though I was not, too much.

Until I got ghosted.

We met at a DJ performance two weeks ago, at a time when I had no intention of giving my attention to anyone besides my sister.

Dancing had always been my weapon. I don’t let myself think. My body just flows with the rhythm. Music and I become opposite poles of a magnet. The pull becomes undeniable. Irreversible.

I think that is how it feels when you truly let yourself be.

Maybe that’s why dancing feels like a shelter.

Because in the modern waking world, that is not a privilege I often give myself.

Dancing is a form of expression. I don’t believe in restrictions when it comes to creative exploration. I admire watching people dance.

Those who understand it tend to find their way into my orbit.

Often, it is my image and my free spirit that pull them in so instinctively.

I am only now realising this.

More often than not, people are interested in my image, not the real me. It is about how it makes them feel to be around me. They take a dose of it. Feel the sense of accomplishment. It is the most primitive way of thinking:

“Oh look, a pretty girl. Let me prove to myself that I can get her.”

I remember the exact moment he lowered his glasses, looked at me, and silently signed me off as his new target.

That same weekend, on Sunday, I also had a date with someone else. Someone I had met the weekend before. I was excited about him. The glasses guy barely mattered.

I watched him slowly make his way over to me until suddenly his face was right across from mine. I smiled and tried dancing with him.

His arms floated unevenly. He swung his head far too much. His jumps were oddly repetitive. He seemed weird. His dancing was cringe.

I brushed him off after giving him two minutes of my attention.

Yet somehow, he found his way back into my orbit.

Later, his goofiness started feeling cute instead of awkward.

My mental compulsions had a way of getting ahead of my instincts.

I didn’t realise that when someone tries this hard to get your attention, they often lose interest the moment they have it.

The good old vicious cycle of love bombing, gaslighting, and ghosting.

I didn’t kiss him that night. I wanted to play hard to get. That was the new promise I made to myself after hearing the same advice over and over again:

“Be yourself less. Don’t give everything away just yet.”

While I kept failing at the first one, the second had been the one I was experimenting with. Nowadays, I seemed to be good at it.

He smiled and said,
“I’m happy to wait.”

The next day he texted:

“How’s my favourite dance partner doing?”

After two back-and-forth replies, I forgot about his existence.

The next day, I went on the date I was excited for. I had already romanticised it into something bigger. We had a meet-cute. He was destined to be my boyfriend.

I shouldn’t have allowed myself to watch so many chick flicks.

Romanticising had never really worked in my favour.

It was an okay kind of date. He was not the one. I was sure of it. Yet, so far, I had only had two boyfriends. I was hungry for experience.

Regardless, we had three pints and chatted for around three hours. He kept going to the toilet. After two pints, his face started getting red. He was still good-looking, I’ll have to admit that.

He said something about almost being hammered. I literally saw him, in between his sentences, turning his face around and making a comment to himself.

“This is actually going really well.”

When we finished our last pint, once again, he went to the toilet.

I get it, we were drinking beer.

When he came back, the first thing he said, without even sitting down, was:

“I think I’m going to get going.”

I was shocked.

Not because he needed to go, but because it was so sudden.

My mind immediately started spiralling.

I must have done something that threw him off like that.

I just didn’t understand how or when.

I felt like saying something and, in the past, whenever there was awkwardness in a situation, I almost always addressed it.

I learned that I shouldn’t be doing that.

So, I swallowed my sentence and immediately stood up.

My self-confidence was ruined by my negative self-talk.

Another awkward moment arrived following our forced kiss.

When I pulled my face back, the same sentence crawled its way upward.

I blurted half of the sentence, then cut myself off in the middle.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I usually hated when that was asked. It always forced me to gaslight my intuition about the situation.

I said yes, turned my back, and walked in the opposite direction.

He, on the other hand, didn’t even stall for a minute before carelessly walking away himself.

My anxiety started kicking in.

I ruined another almost-never-happening.

I couldn’t help but send him a text.

“Thanks for the drinks, by the way. I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”

I expected he’d reply.

He didn’t. Ever.

I couldn’t help feeding the expectation of waking up to a notification on my phone the next day.

I didn’t.

I sent another message:

“Did something happen that made you leave so suddenly yesterday? I was just curious.”

If I was never going to see him again, I could at least have his feedback.

All I got in return was silence.

Regardless of how or when it happens, ghosting is always frustrating. It took me a day to get over it. I barely knew him.

He probably had a girlfriend. I guess I’ll never know.

The thing with ghosting is that it is very unnecessary.

All that is being asked for is an answer. The choice not to give it somehow makes the other person feel better about themselves. It satisfies their ego. They get to define the narrative.

They have control.

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Two days later, I replied to the glasses guy. Apologising for my late reply and picking up the conversation from where I left off.

He asked me to go see a DJ on Saturday night.

I wanted to, but I had training at 9 AM the next day. I told him I could meet him for drinks until he went to the event.

He said he’d scout the best spot for us.

I felt very confident going into that date. I had the upper hand with him.

It somehow went perfectly.

I had the kind of conversation I longed for without thinking that I was boring the other person. We discussed philosophy, psychology, and criticised modern conversations that revolved around the weather.

We even wrote a poem together.

I asked him if he had invited someone else to go to the concert with him. He said he hadn’t and implied that, deep down, he had hoped maybe I would accompany him.

I said I would.

The concert was like a movie scene.

Their lead singer was badass. We were dancing, vibing, and holding our bodies close to each other. We had chemistry.

While we were dancing, an old lady threw herself from the back of the venue toward where we stood.

She raised her arms up, jumping and dancing like crazy.

Then she saw me. I have to thank her, she really boosted my confidence with her compliments. She asked the glasses guy if he knew how lucky he was.

He said yes. Very much.

The concert ended, but there was still stuff going on in the venue. I told him I had to go. I had to prioritise my training. Sort of. It was 3 AM.

He said there was no reason for him to stay if I left.

We walked outside together.

“Where are you planning to go?” I asked.

“Well, I was thinking I could come with you. If not, I’m happy to get an Uber home.”

I thought I should decline it.

I said yes.

We spent the night together, but our bodies didn’t touch the way you’d expect.

I was playing hard to get. At least the kind that would not give away her “power” during the first date.

He said he was happy to wait. That tension somehow made it even better. He kept telling me how great it would be when we finally did it.

I woke up earlier than I should have because I was afraid of being late to my training. We left my place around 9 AM, and he offered to walk with me to the Underground.

We bought coffee along the way, and I said, “This is where we depart,” when we arrived in front of the train station.

He said he was thinking of coming upstairs with me. He didn’t mind tapping his card in and out, then ended up taking the subway with me to my destination.

He was going to get an Uber from there.

I had always been a chatty morning person. He said he liked it and that I energised him. I started sharing my entire stream of thoughts, then apologised for it. He said he found it cute.

He walked me to Regent’s University, where I had my training. We kissed and said goodbye, and his last words were:

“I’ll text you later.”

He did. I knew he would.

It was the perfect first date.

During the week, our message thread kept flowing back and forth.

He suggested we meet on Sunday because he had a music festival gig he had to attend on Friday and Saturday.

He worked at a label company.

I replied to his last message half a day later on Thursday, casually continuing the conversation.

He didn’t reply.

I didn’t question it at first. I also hadn’t replied to him for four days before we had our first date. There was a time I responded to someone a month later.

It was casual. Nothing big.

The deadline I gave myself in my head was Sunday morning before I allowed myself to spiral. I was sure I’d wake up to a message from him until then.

I didn’t.

My mind kept generating scenarios to stop me from believing what was really happening.

I was being ghosted. Again.

Earlier, we were texting through iMessage. I thought he might have missed the notifications. There were times I did.

I caught him online on WhatsApp.

I couldn’t help but send him another message that said:

“I wouldn’t expect to be ghosted by you.
Anyway.
Take care.”

He switched our chat’s settings to disappearing messages.

I was really hopeful about this one.

Everything went perfectly.

The only logical reason could be that he had a girlfriend.

But if he had a girlfriend, why did he bother meeting with me?

Why did he plan the next date?

Was I simply providing him with the feeling of being chosen until it no longer mattered because he had already proved to himself that he could?

I was just tired of being disappointed.

I still am.

Author’s note: I really poured it all out there folks. And if my words made you feel seen, offered you solace or company, I invite you to consider upgrading to paid.

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The voice you hear in the audio is entirely mine.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear yourself reflected back through art, I create custom songs for my paid subscribers. Personal songs and spoken pieces shaped around their writing, and sung by me.

When every version of yourself feels distant, do you ever ask if they were ever you?

I used to belong to the roles people needed me to be. My positivity would spill into other realms, feeding others while emptying me. Beneath it all, I knew those borrowed personalities were never really mine to carry.

I never wanted to break free while realising that being somebody was killing me.
Life is a paradox.

By not betraying my nature I was betraying my nature.

I loved who I was way too much that I didn’t realise, slowly, it was turning into a performance.

Up until now, I thought I was performing for others.

In truth, I was performing for the gaze that met me in every mirror.

There was a certain version of me that I held very dear and kept calling it my essence. The one that kept jumping around, singing, swirling, being chatty for no reason.

When something is deemed renewable, we grow reckless, mistaking endurance for infinity.

Yet the truth is quieter, more merciless: what is squandered does not return untouched, and what is lost does not fully replenish.

I wasted and abused myself as though the well of my energy could never run dry. I rose each morning under the illusion of being restored to 100%.

Maybe none of us ever paused to ask what that exhaustion costs.

What if, one day, our energy simply refused to serve us?

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For years I threw myself into activities without estimating how much they drained me, without pausing to take stock. I managed to make it to 27 without ever thinking that this lifestyle might cost something.

I was wrong in a way that I didn’t foresee.

The life I had, the self I kept demanding out of it, wasn’t costing me something.

It was costing me everything.

Not the lack of effort but the opposite, the act of overeffort.

The act of forcefulness.

I held death and potential in the same hand. I did not see life repeatedly offering me an invitation to see that what I thought was peace was, in truth, a comfortable prison. Because the path I chose appeared seemingly safe.
But it constrained.

What I once called triumph turned into loss.

I became utterly lost, just in a more visible way.

For a while now, I have been trying to live through my older versions. Yet, I keep arriving at these destinations that feel worse than being on the road.

Perhaps my inner struggle today lies exactly here, none of my past versions will be close, and I will belong to none of them.

Yet, I cannot help but feed the fear that lives in me.
The fear of becoming,
a nobody.

Instead, I clung to meaning through the war within, only to be left beneath the empty skies of unfinished outcomes, where every confident step leads to incongruence. My self-confidence started to show up as an inflated balloon in disguise, leaving me with the feeling as if I was an imposter.

When you lose your performance, is it truly a loss or a win?

Life functions in its own weird way. That’s why searching for purpose and meaning can be deceitful.

I kept imprisoning myself in cages of my own making, expecting life to appear in a certain way. In return, my life didn’t remotely turn out the way I pictured when I was little girl.

There was a time when I searched my mother’s gaze for reassurance. Instead, she stood there, wordless and frozen.

I did not know whether I’d be ever be okay when my health worsened.

That was when I found my healing in hopelessness.

Hopelessness strips away illusions, the false promise of ‘later’ or the fantasy that suffering will one day vanish forever, leaving us face-to-face with the moral and emotional weight of now.

I now refuse to say to myself, it’s all going to be okay.

Because with no hope came no expectations. I went to hell and back, and when it lifted, I promised myself that when bad things came again, I would not project hope onto them before I knew what they meant.

Only then, life became urgent in a way it never was before.

It is this bareness, the absence of guaranteed outcomes, that makes love and struggle sacred.

They are unrepeatable and finite.

When we make peace with the idea that it may not be okay, we start noticing that what isn’t okay is beautiful in its own way.

I still remember those days where shame wrapped me in every corner, in every gaze, and I stayed within those four walls watching sitcom series with my mother, my sister, and my grandmother. Despite the pain of not being able to take two steps forward, I still cherish those days where I heard my grandmother’s laughter.

When something cannot be renewed, when it is finite, its ending makes it priceless.

I have been living with the growing fear of losing my grandmother.

That’s what reverses the pain that I carried those days into joy, blissful and gentle. My cries are silenced by my grandmother’s laughter when that doorman dropped the tray and spilled everything on it onto the silk dress of the landlord’s wife in her favourite show.

Maybe that’s what remains in the end.

Not a polished identity. A secure job. Or a false promise of later.

Perhaps the strange relief of not having answers does not make life smaller, but invites the wonder.

Not the knowing of who you are or whether everything will be okay.

But seeing the laughter inside the pain.

Authors note: What I realised as I wrote this piece carried as much of a revelation as its message.

I hadn’t cried while writing something for a long time. Until I wrote these words.

I don’t practice my ideas before putting them on the page. More often than not, I start writing without knowing where it will lead me. And I try to stay as honest with you here as I am with myself.

So I ask you to take a moment to consider upgrading to paid. I try to share as much of my work freely as I can because I believe in healing through each other’s stories.

If my words ever made a difference in your world, your paid subscription would make one in mine too.

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For the ones who look strong on the outside while carrying a sensitivity that can feel like both a blessing and a burden.

For those who have spent years trying to understand themselves, because I have too, and I know how lonely that journey can feel.

My writing lives at the intersection of psychology, memory, philosophy, and storytelling. It is shaped by the emotional patterns we inherit, the contradictions we carry, the selves we perform, and the selves we quietly abandon in order to survive.

This space exists for the inner worlds we rarely speak about out loud.

The philosophical beside the emotional.

The mythic beside the personal.

The hidden beside the seen.

Some pieces here are essays. Some are poems. Some are fragments written in the middle of the night when language felt like the only way back to myself.

But all of them are an attempt to understand what it means to be human without turning away from the depth of it.

If any part of you has ever felt too much, too sensitive, too complicated, or too unseen, maybe you will find something of yourself here too.

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The story of the what if that followed me into every love that came after.

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Were you the child who believed trying harder would finally be enough?

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On conditional love, inherited patterns, and what it means to stop losing yourself just to be chosen by others.

On burnout, lost potential, and the quiet weight of feeling left behind, accompanied by an immersive video poem.

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When you found yourself circling the same pattern, did you abandon yourself, or did you choose to stay?

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About me

I write at the intersection of psychology, memory, and philosophical storytelling.

My academic background in Psychology, followed by an MSc in Clinical Psychology, shaped my understanding of the hidden architecture within people: the emotional patterns we inherit, the contradictions we carry, the selves we perform, and the selves we quietly abandon in order to survive.

I’m a published poet in The Closed Eye Open, Issue XV (May 2026), where my poem opens the magazine.

If something in this writing felt familiar, stay.

Subscribe and let this become a place you return to, not just pass through.

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My page is is currently being featured on Sidestack’s “Top Substacks This Week.” Readers can now vote, and the publication with the most support will be chosen as Substack of the Week.

I’d be incredibly grateful for your vote.

Voter for Imi

Author’s note: For the first time, I let myself sing.

The voice in the audio belongs to me.

I’ve been meaning to do it for so long. And maybe that’s what this piece was always about anyway.
Trying to arrive somewhere inside myself.

In the meantime, we’ll always have Florence.
Will we?

With you, I’m not afraid of whether you’ll leave.
I’m afraid of you never arriving to me.

Because I could not arrive at myself.

Distance is no issue with me, only physically.
I want to gently give you my ear, not my body.

Because I could not hear myself.

The beauty you see in me
does not always survive
the mirrors that I meet.

Yesterday, at dawn, there was someone
who said goodbye to herself.
I saw her.
She did not see me.
Her gaze drifted with curiosity,
but there was no one
waiting for her
when the sun rose.

But with you, I pictured it.
Not clearly.
I couldn’t see it.
I could feel it,
you leaning on me,
pulling my hair slightly.

We looked at each other
almost like our eyes
knew the language of our hearts.

My heart always favoured blue

My eyes are brown.

What began with tears
ended with laughter.

In the meantime, we’ll always have Florence.
Will we?

It is okay
if we don’t.

For my paid subscribers, I create custom poems and songs shaped around your story. Your story becomes the spine. And upon request, I’ll happily sing it too.

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I keep most of my writing free because I believe in healing through each other’s stories.

If my writing speaks to you, becoming a paid subscriber helps me keep creating from a place of depth, experimentation, and emotional honesty.

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“You have never actually met yourself,” said David Hume.

Instead, a memory appeared, then a feeling, then a fear, then a desire, then a sensation, all constantly moving and replacing one another.

Mine started off with the first time I went to a nightclub.

The summer I graduated from eighth grade we went on a family vacation. My sisters would go out every night while I stayed in our shared room, my gaze drifting toward the ceiling in frustration.

What came after were those mornings when I would plug my ears with imaginary cotton to avoid listening to their adventures like kissing random boys, dancing till the morning and vomiting inside their palms when no one was looking.

One night, they decided to take me with them.

I was as excited as a thirteen-year-old can get. My sisters basically put a new face on me with makeup that left me with no choice but to sneak out of our hotel. I knew that my makeup would be too much for my father not to get angry.

I was his little girl.

Both he and my mother had to work constantly while my sisters were growing up. It was my grandmother who raised them.

The only child he got to fully experience parenting with was me. Still, his overwhelming affection did not feel like grief over his youngest growing up.

It felt patriarchal.

When we arrived at the club, my sisters asked me to hold hands with one of their male friends to make my entrance easier.

Apparently, that’s what a male presence does.

The bodyguards at the door, though, still asked for my ID, but I was prepared. My sister had given me hers, and I had placed it in the easiest pocket of my bag. One that would not make the guard suspicious, because I was so sure of myself.

I was never sure of myself.

Just ‘being’ never felt enough for people to stay. Silencing myself for the sake of being seen, I grew into an identity I thought would free me from the burden on my chest.

My mind linked experiences together through memory and habit, then created the impression of a stable self standing behind them.

I lived with the illusion that one day I would walk through a door where I would no longer feel restless, as if life was a 9 to 5 job where I could come home and throw off my jacket.

That night, I heard the song that became the anthem of my being.

“It is now or never.
I ain’t going to be just a face in the crowd.
You’re gonna hear my voice when I shout it out loud.”

We returned from our vacation the next day, but I never returned from my new motto that Bon Jovi laid out so beautifully.

It gave certainty, causation, identity, permanence.

But if my voice was going to be heard, why did I need to shout it out loud?

Hume argued that what we really experience are sequences and impressions, while the mind fills in the rest like a narrator desperate to turn fragments into meaning.

My environment complemented my extraverted nature, and I filled my time with socialising even when I did not want to. I mastered elevator talks, the kind that helps you avoid awkward silences with strangers.

I was comfortable with strangers. I was not comfortable with silence.

Convinced that I was chasing interactions, I was really chasing validation.

Hume would say, “You never directly perceived reality itself, only your perceptions of it.”

Maybe he needed shouting as well. Because that was when the idea of turning into a person who would make my father proud granted me an easy exit.

Up until recently, I saw it as a sacrifice. Only now I’m realising, I was avoiding who I was.

My father imagined a future for me that looked a lot like my mother’s as a lawyer. Until one day my sister came home from school and started telling me about her crush acting arrogant.

“He must like me, otherwise why would he annoy me, right?”

My entire future was set out when I said, “Yes, you are right sister.”

Her eyes brightened with the kind of spark that looked like it was borrowed from the North Star sitting on the top of our Christmas tree.

She leaned closer and said, “Imi, you would make a great psychologist,” and laid out a perfect ten-year plan for me.

I was sold.

Pursuing a career in psychology made me dream of publishing papers, of being hosted as a guest speaker.

Later, I realised I hated research. But my father was a big “I told you” person.

The gap between who I was and who I felt compelled to prove myself to be became the heart of perfectionism.

I strived to prove that I could make it, that I would not be just a face standing in the crowd, until one day I could no longer hear Bon Jovi the same way I did before.

What if I became faceless for the sake of not being just a face in the crowd?

I was no longer sure what purpose I was serving. Or more accurately, whose purpose I was serving.

Everything was borrowed besides those quiet hours that I kept journaling.

I remember one time during Covid when I told my sisters that I was the funniest person I knew, as one of the reasons why I journaled so often.

Humour is an avoidance strategy too.

I was being seen. People were noticing my presence. Acknowledging my role. Validating my “identity” on their terms.

Even if someone sees you, their perception shifts your reality.

Someone understanding the meaning behind what I say, was a lottery I never won. Holding space for how I feel rather than how I appear, meeting me where I am, not where they want me to be.

I was never being heard.

Days did not follow. Nights did. They looked like empty bottles, forcing me to swallow each of my dreams with the next sip.

While sleep remained the only resolution between me and the next day, the clouds pulled the curtains.

I vanished. The person who I never got to meet.

They took the wheel, together with the version of me who did not know how to be.

I started to feel detached, like I was watching life from the outside. Almost too quiet to participate.

Until I found myself in tears, struggling to breathe while my eyes resisted drifting toward the ceiling.

That was when the panic attacks began.

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I began to notice the ways I kept erasing myself; being a thoughtful sister, a best friend, a saviour to my mother, a daughter bound by a vow to earn her father’s pride.

I used to blame others for their expectations. Later, I realised the responsibility was mine. I kept running at full speed for the happiness of others while dismissing my own needs.

A few days ago, I attended an eight-hour training on two hours of sleep. I spent the day feeling like a ghost, as if I was there but not really. That was fine for a day. The harder truth is that I have been showing up like that for much longer.

Present, but not fully there. Existing, but only in relation to others.

Drifting between my true self and the version I felt compelled to perform, I treated external validation as permission to take up space, not realising that existence requires no permission at all.

I kept showing up for others while keeping my own presence distant.

When I started blaming myself for pursuing a love so conditionally, I paused and asked:

Does this negative self-talk ever end when we keep tying every disappointment back to ourselves?

Mine didn’t. My mind produces thoughts the way lungs produce breath. But instead of seeing them as passing clouds, I identified with them. When I stepped back, even slightly, they softened. They only ever asked for space.

That distance changed something. I became the observer, and my thoughts began to drift like leaves on water. Slowly, a quieter truth settled in me.

Accountability never felt like understanding because I was never able to face myself gently. Every attempt to take responsibility became another form of self-blame. I kept abandoning my inner truth because it felt easier than learning how to stand on it.

Last year, I met someone at a training. The unexpected nature of our connection excited me. I kept showing up while he never really did. I became something he moved around, depending on his mood.

My mind searched for reasons, most of them turning back on me.

One day, he told me he had become serious with someone else. I accepted it, but the feeling of not being chosen stayed.

Time passed. We never fully lost contact. The connection kept resurfacing.

Six months later, after his breakup, we met again. He told me he would do it right this time.

I haven’t seen him since.

A few days ago, I texted him. He replied, “You always pop up at not so random times.”

I didn’t need to overthink it. The pattern was familiar.

But this time, something shifted.

While I had spent so long in the pain of not being chosen, I realised I had been recreating the same experience. Not consciously, but consistently.

He wasn’t the story. He was the mirror.

I had been dismissing my own truth, and in doing so, I allowed others to do the same.

I was not chosen because I was the one who did not choose myself.

Once I saw it, the pattern became clear.

My relationships echoed what I believed about myself. The real author of my life had always been my inner state.

Abandonment, longing, self-blame, emotional intensity, being the side character in someone else’s story, none of it was fate. It was learned.

Maybe the search for oneself never truly ends. But every loss carries something with it. A quiet direction, if we are willing to see it.

The choice, though, is always ours.

We can keep erasing ourselves, dissolving into doubt until there is nothing left to hold onto.

Or we can choose to live, knowing the past cannot be rewritten, but the future is shaped here.

As for me, I start today.

Not perfectly, but honestly. With the understanding that I will make mistakes, and that I am allowed to.

So I want to ask you:

When was the last time you found yourself circling the same pattern, as if life was returning the same lesson in a different form?

Did your mistakes become louder than the truth of who you are?

Or did you let them teach you something, quietly shaping what comes next?

Did you abandon yourself,

or did you choose to stay?

Author’s note: If my writing speaks to you, becoming a paid subscriber helps me keep creating from a place of depth, experimentation, and emotional honesty.

For my paid subscribers, I create custom poems and songs shaped around your story; your breakup, your longing, your healing, your loss, your everything.

Your story becomes the spine.

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Inspired by the writing prompt from Nimila the Inferno for ///// THE CUT /////

Let THE CUT be at the center of it.
What does the cut evoke?
What does it change, reveal, hide, return?
Where does it hurt?
Why does it stay?

The posters that I got from Portobello
are staring at me from my left wall,
they do not contain humans,
they carry elements of thought.

I did not pierce them into the wall,
this house belongs to my landlord,
just as everything, I remain borrowed.

One of the posters fell,
I didn’t put it back up.
From all those years of forcing myself to stand upright,
I do not have the power for an inanimate object,
just as with life.

From here on, I will go backwards, not forward.
All those cuts that left their scars
are just like that poster,
they left a blank spot.

The future is not for hope
but for it to remain without cuts.
Yet living in tomorrow
has always brought costs.

I still carry the mark
of that burning coal,
it settled on my throat.
The memory of it, I do not recall.
I did not feel the pain.
My mind left it in the screams
I shouted
for my mother to come home.

No one is coming.
I know that now.
I do not need it.
I only need more blank spots
on the wall.

Panic surged three times last week,
as I remained breathless, hands shaking,
eyes too tired to drift to the ceiling
to shove my tears back inside.

Bits and pieces, cuts arrived.
I didn’t lose myself overnight.
Cuts kept hitting the same spot,
my wound widened, deepened,
too close to my heart.

It didn’t shed a skin,
it stopped pumping blood.
I remained dead
in waking life.

It cut my feet
off the ground.
I started using artificial ones.

They are not mine,
they belong to L-dopa.

I walked backwards,
now I am facing fear.
not for the day my walking disappears,
but so my sister
does not have a bad time
while she is here.

That spot on the wall
is a part of my life.
For the creation of the girl
I shall meet tomorrow,
I won’t protect her.
There will be cuts,
but I let go of what has already been done.

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The result of always living in the future cost me my calm and I grew restless over time without ever feeling grateful toward the present. The kind of ungratefulness that caused me my health once.

When I was a child, people kept asking me,
“What are the three most important things in your life?”

Although their rankings would change, my top three would revolve around family, friendship, love, career and fun.

Forget making it to the top three, health wasn’t even in my mention at the time.

I was ungrateful like winter, arriving without warning, just as my foot injury did when I fell from an ATV during a safari ride I went on with my sister in Bodrum.

We had rented a house by the coast during a summer where I could hear birds singing beside the jingle that came from the wind chime every morning.

Peaceful it was.
Still, I kept nagging my parents for taking me away from my friends for a month, asking what we would be doing when the boredom arrived.

Without being bored for once.

Experience follows the energetic shape of what is being stated or inhabited, not what is being rejected.

Law of Attraction claims that the universe responds to our focus or emotional state.
If we focus on something, we attract more of it.

While I thought, “I don’t want to be bored”, my attention was still centred on boredom.

The universe didn’t treat that “don’t” as removal but only as attachment to the concept.

In the end, I was left with an injury that required three stitches, forcing me to memorise the entire TV stream while everyone else went for a swim. My sisters went out at night while I remained at home, sobbing to my parents while I kept blaming myself for always asking for more within.

As I grew up, my hunger for more merged with my hunger for excellence and I became a perfectionist that turned into my identity.

While I secretly found solace in finding a label that I could identify with, I didn’t realise how much it took away from the hazards of possibilities that could’ve happened any minute.

Until those harsh months where the London sky mercilessly deprived us of the sun for 55 days straight, where I felt like I rotted, staring at that bricked wall through the corner of my L-couch.

Day by day, I grew distant from who I thought I was.

My house turned into a mess that could be thrown away to the trash all at once and I grew estranged from the only place I could ever call home in my life.

It wasn’t these four walls that led me to suffocate under the heaviness of each day I woke up carrying a burden on my chest. While the days stretched endlessly and I kept finding reasons to grind every night, my environment was mirroring back my inner state.

I no longer had the will to prove to the world, but most importantly, my harshest critic, that I was enough. Yet, I drowned myself in past experiences, using them for my writing, not allowing the tides to sweep away the remaining ruins that kept me stuck in past hurt, pain and trauma.

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Until last Saturday, when me and my sister started our afternoon with a pub crawl.

It was all laughter and giggles under the sun while more than a couple of pints became our companions.

While I do not know how many friends I asked if I could borrow money that night for a couple more cheers, it didn’t matter as long as me and my sister were having a good time.

Until we didn’t.

On our last stop, we started speaking of our other sister who is about to be proposed to.

Suddenly, a wave of rage in me began to take root.

According to Eckhart Tolle, humans carry an accumulation of old emotional pain within them. Painful experiences that were never fully processed don’t completely disappear. Instead, they remain as an energetic and emotional residue.

When we stop reacting from the present moment and instead react from accumulated past pain, we start being controlled by our pain body.

Our conversation turned into a fight between me and my sister that left me crying at a bus stop on a windy night, sitting on cold steel with bare legs, wearing a thin coat.

Only then I realised, I left my keys at home.

We took refuge in a hotel lobby , sitting apart from each other while I kept crying as my mind itched with self-destructive thoughts.

My alter ego left the wheel when the alcohol in my blood dissolved.

I went over to my sister and without a word I gave her a hug, allowing myself to feel her warmth.

We rode back to my place when the clock hit a decent hour for us to ring my neighbours, laughing about everything that we’d been through. I ended up climbing a six-foot-tall gate and making a jump that I am still proud of.

That morning, before going to sleep, I kept staring at those rotten roses, white and red, that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away since the beginning of the winter.

Throwing them away meant something to me, yet I did not know what it kept hidden while my gaze kept drifting toward them during those lonely nights.

I know now, I was holding onto a self that confined me to an identity I was never meant to be fixated on.

I failed this winter.

And that is precisely why I remain hopeful for tomorrow.

Because this winter taught me that I wasn’t who I thought I was and I find solace in not reaching for clarity.

I now embrace each dawn, for it offers me a chance to begin again, unchanged in essence yet reborn in spirit.

For with each sunrise I return to myself, for every breath is a beginning, every awakening a silent revolution of becoming, and every dusk a farewell to my old self that is retiring.

I threw away those roses today because their death was never there to destroy me, but to remind me of the urgency of life.

By sharpening longing into clarity and turning desire into motion, they stayed close enough to whisper that one’s life is anchored in time.

Author’s note: If my writing speaks to you, becoming a paid subscriber helps me keep creating from a place of depth, experimentation, and emotional honesty. What may seem like a small gesture sustains the quiet work behind every word you read here, and perhaps something even bigger in the future. If my words have ever made a difference in your world, your paid subscription would make one in mine too.

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Reviews from former dreamers:

Thank you for trusting me with your dream. The images immediately struck me.

: “I remember being in a firefight in the desert.

There were buildings to my rear and sand hills to my north. Behind those hills was the enemy. They were shooting at us. I looked around and saw what I thought were my friends, my comrades. They shot back and I shot back. The firefight grew more intense minute by minute. Then I saw some people, a man, a woman, and two kids, running in desperation toward me. I could tell they were running away from the enemy. I yelled for them to wait so we could effectively suppress the enemy. But they were scared and kept running toward me. I fired back toward the hills so they could make it.

Then I felt something hit my chest.

A bullet straight to the heart. I collapsed. On the ground, choking on my blood, I saw them still running, hoping they could make it. I tried to shoot back again, but I could not move. I kept getting hit and I realized it was over for me. I could not stop thinking about how short my life was and how much of it I wasted.

I asked myself, so that was that? Is this over?

In those last moments I found myself wishing I could die because the agony of being alive was too overwhelming. I lay there with my eyes closed hoping death would come before I could hear that family in pain.

When I died, I woke up.”

What this dream is expressing:

I don’t think this dream was about war. I think it was about what survives after you stop calling it war.

This feels like a psyche caught inside a total inner war where everything has become survival mode. Seeing yourself as a firefighter in that landscape sets a tone of incongruence. Your role is built for urgency, containment, and control, yet the environment offers very little structure to respond to.

In Jungian language, the desert is not just a place but a state of inner dryness, where feeling, meaning, and softness have been pushed out and instinct takes over. There are buildings behind you and sand hills ahead.

This is where the dream stops being a scene and reveals what it was built from.

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