At night, I tear myself apart. Not just in my mind, but with precision. I lay out every part of me on a cold table and start slicing through—thought by thought, memory by memory until nothing feels human anymore.
I go over my life like it’s evidence in a case where I’m both the victim and the culprit. Every pause. Every desperate silence. Every time I wanted more than I dared to ask for. I scrutinize my flaws so closely they stop being vague and become tangible. This is where I falter. This is where I mess things up. This is where people walk away.
I can feel my awareness pressing against my skull, trying to break free. I’m never unconscious within myself. Never numb enough. Never gone enough. I watch my thoughts form in real time and despise every single one for existing.
I’m embarrassed by how deeply I feel. Ashamed of how badly I want to be understood. Disgusted by how much space I take up just by being alive. I constantly shrink myself and still feel like an intruder.
I wonder what it would be like to be empty—to not narrate my own downfall, to not analyze every breath, to not remember everything with surgical clarity. But emptiness never arrives. Only awareness. Only endless internal commentary. Only me, watching myself decay and taking notes.
This is the part no one talks about: Not the pain. Not the sadness. The self-surveillance.
Being trapped with a mind that never shuts up, never forgives, never lets you forget who you were at your worst. Being awake while your insides feel spoiled. Knowing you are the problem and the vessel holding it.
I don’t want rescue. I don’t want absolution. I don’t want a neat resolution where this makes sense later. I want this documented exactly as it is—ugly, obsessive, humiliating.
This is me, still breathing, still thinking, still tearing myself apart in the dark like there’s something rotten I might finally find if I cut deep enough.