The Internal Monologue

  Diagnosis of an Exhausted Soul I. Trapped Grief. Trapped grief represents a fundamental error in the social accounting of loss. In a performance-based culture, the Tough Girl tribute serves as a binding  contract that forbids the outward expression of sorrow, effectively forcing the  individual to sequester emotional trauma within the somatic nervous system.  This results in a state of internal insolvency where the energy required to maintain a professional veneer exceeds the total capacity of the psyche. The biological cost of this sequestration is a measurable cognitive decline. When the mind is forced to prioritize the suppression of a scream , it must divert resources away from executive functions such as memory and focus. The whirlwind of despair is the inevitable entropy of a system that has been denied the opportunity to reset through mourning.  We must therefore conclude that the societal demand for buckling up is a direct cause of the era...

Diagnosis of An Exhausted Soul Reckless Peace What the world calls Selfishness , the survivor recognizes as a Reckless Peace . This is the deliberate dismantling of the social altar where you have been expected to sacrifice your pulse for the comfort of the collective. When the mind is a whirlwind of despair, the only logical response is to burn the bridges that lead to further extraction. If putting your dreams, your ambitions, and your peace first makes you a Villain in the narrative of others, one must question the morality of those who demand you remain a Martyr for their convenience.  Why is it that we are taught to value a Professional Reputation more than a regulated nervous system? This piece of Chaotic Good is a radical rejection of the productivity obsession that defines a soul by its output rather than its endurance. By choosing yourself, you are signing a peace treaty with your own survival. Consider this for a moment . If you were to vanish today to reset , who wou...

Diagnosis of an Exhausted Soul Dying Smile The Dying Smile is a sophisticated mechanism of threat-detection. In the anxious brain, human connection is no longer processed as a support system but as a  high-risk liability, a trouble that demands a surplus of energy that simply does not exist .   This results in the paradoxical behavior of pushing others away... to  avoid the looming funeral of an eventual departure.  Is this sabotage a lack of love?  Or   it an advanced survival strategy to ensure that the only person left to disappoint you is yourself?    We live in a culture that prioritizes the Social Contract of Politeness over the biological reality of mental exhaustion.  When the brain perceives a knock at the door as a breach of security, the resulting isolation is a fortification . Ask yourself ,  How much of your social circle is built on genuine resonance? And how much is merely a performance you maintain to avoid the Lawful ...

Letters To Me, Before, Now and To Come Letter IV.  The Heavy Coat   I was thinking maybe I could just vanish and reset , ghosting the world to heal in the shadows... But the calls and emails keep drowning me in expectations that I  am far too exhausted to meet.  It feels impossible that a client’s mood should  depend on me when I am still fighting to stay afloat.  Yet my quietness is  perceived as being “ Too-Known” and my honesty is labeled as “ Rude” until  everything I do becomes a problem for people who only project their own  insecurities onto my silence.  I have decided to stop caring about their opinions,  because I refuse to internalize their demeaning advice and second-guess my own abilities.  So I wear this tactical apathy like a heavy coat that protects my  heart even as the weight of it crushes my shoulders.  I am watching that faint  figure on the horizon finally start walking toward me to hel...

Letters to Me, The Before, Now, and To Come Letter III. The Unsent Debt I want to undo death. I want to unread the tribute that trapped me in five lines of being a tough girl , searching for the meaning in the missed times while the words I cannot speak stay stuck in my chest. They burn through my throat and sinking into my tummy where they ache alongside a head that pounds when sleep refuses to come. I will keep resending the opportunities  I missed because of my anxiety.  And I will keep working on myself because I  think that’s what you want... I am hanging in there to find out if this debt ever gets  paid and if I will ever finally be allowed to stop being the tough girl .

Letters To Me, The Before, Now and To Come   Letter II. Everything and Nothing, To my Suspended Self I lost a version of myself so completely that I cannot even remember her face, Yet, I spend every waking moment putting a crushing pressure on my soul to be a better replacement for that ghost, birthing a deep sense of inadequacy as I try to make up for a person who no longer exists. I am suspended in a void where I feel everything and nothing at all. I am simultaneously drowning in the sharp edges of my grief and swimming through the thick, suffocating waters of an anxiety that never lets me rest or find my footing.  Even the simple task of getting out of bed, becomes an impossible mountain, one that requires more courage than I have. It leaves me to drag my body through a life that feels like a weight I was never meant to carry.  I am NUMB and SCARED but still moving. I am hanging in there to find out who   is left when the suspension finally breaks... and if,...

Letters to Me, The Before, Now and To Come     Letter I.  The Quiet Noise   I thought the silence would finally give me room to breathe , a sanctuary where I c ould draw the air deep into my lungs and find a piece of heart to focus.  But  the stillness doesn't help as it should because it only makes my grief easier to  hear.  This quiet noise rings through my mind and leaves me stranded with a  version of myself I no longer recognize. It makes the stillness feel like a heavy  weight pressing against my chest rather than the gift I went looking for. I am  sitting in the wreckage of a silence that was supposed to be a cure but turned  out to be a cruel irony . So I am learning to stop waiting for the stillness to fix  the fractures in my soul. I am  deciding instead to inhabit the noise until it no  longer scares me, until the silence is no longer a burden, but a space where I am  allowed to ex...