Light mood days. Heavy mood days. Moody mood days. Mood days. Days slept through. Days stayed awake through. Days that passed without asking for permission. In love. Lethargic. Happy. Sad. Sentimental, mostly. Alive, somehow. I resist. I think. I act. I walk. I eat. I try to eat. I listen, I speak. People ask, I answer. Most of the time, I talk before I think. Sometimes, I think so much I stop talking. I wake up without having slept. I sleep without really waking up. Lately, I've been acting tougher than I am. Sharper. Colder. Harder to reach. Like glass pretending to be steel. But there is a soft spot under all of this. There always is. I don't always need to win. I don't always need to be above it. I don't want to be loved for a version of me I built because I was afraid to be seen. I am vulnerable. I am not a machine. I am lovable, even when I'm difficult. Especially when I'm difficult. Some days, I wish someone could teach me how to feel real without feeling ruined. How to turn the power back on without burning the whole system down. And then there is you. Or the idea of you. Or the chemical accident my body calls you. Every time I think I'm done, something in me lights up again. Data against data. Memory against reason. The body keeping receipts the mind keeps trying to delete. Maybe it's biology. Maybe it's longing with better branding. Maybe it's just the brain flooding itself and calling it fate. Science can name the chemicals, but it still can't explain why a person becomes a place you keep trying to return to. So maybe I'm overbothered. Ruminating, on purpose. Examining. Pondering. Just enough to feel overpowered. Not dramatic. Not cured. Still ruminating. There are nights when my words come out wounded. Little silent cries dressed up as sentences. I keep distance like a ritual. I keep memory like a bruise. I have begged feelings to leave as if feelings have ever taken orders from me. Sorrow has been familiar. Too familiar. A blessing, sometimes. A diamond, sometimes. A boyfriend, sometimes. A room I know how to enter in the dark. But I don't want sadness to be the only lover I can recognize. I don't want longing to be the only proof that I was here. Maybe love should be easier than this. Maybe we know, almost immediately, when something is worth staying for. Maybe all this digging, all this decoding, all this need to get to the bottom of the wound is just another way to avoid leaving. Everyone says love is hard. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're lazy. Because when love is real, it doesn't ask you to disappear inside it. It makes room. It softens the edges. It doesn't need to be excavated like a crime scene. When we love, we love the whole thing. The beautiful parts. The unbearable parts. The embarrassing, human, badly-lit parts. And maybe that's not nothing. Not because love saves us. Not because sadness makes us special. Not because the body always knows best. But because I am still here. Thinking. Speaking. Sleeping badly. Feeling too much. Trying to eat. Trying to answer. Trying to be real. Not made of steel. Not untouchable. Not finished. Just alive. Still loading. Irritated, maybe. Tired, of what exactly, who knows. Fatigued might be the better word. But happy, somehow, to feel irritated. To feel tired. To feel myself tiring. Fatigued. Fatiguing. Loved. Loving. Remembered. Remembering. Maybe that is the closest thing I have to proof: being alive while living. And wanting to stay alive while living. Not afraid of tomorrow, since tomorrow hasn't booked a table yet, hasn't RSVP'd to anything, hasn't even decided what to wear. Branded? Low-key? High fashion? I'm prepared. Not ready, you fools. Prepared. Preparation lets you look back without panicking. It leaves room for nuance. No urgency. No costume. I'm wearing bravery. I feel… Brave for today. Brave for yesterday. Brave, somehow, for always. A coward only for not being cowardly sooner. Comfortable, maybe. Who knows? --

June 3rd, 2026.