There are days when the smallest things feel oversized. A tight muscle suddenly feels symbolic. A lump in the throat lingers longer than expected. It’s strange how emotions arrive without asking permission, as if they’ve chosen a random Tuesday to stage an unannounced parade.
I move through the day with this invisible weight, pretending nothing’s happening, while inside I’m busy trying to hold myself together. It’s unsettling how private frustration can be; how the world continues normally while you’re quietly swelling with noise.
What surprises me most is how loneliness sneaks in even when I’m surrounded by people I care about. It isn’t dramatic loneliness — more like standing in a crowded room and sensing a glass wall between my inside and everything outside. I miss connection I can’t name. I miss ease. I miss feeling sturdy.
Sometimes the tears arrive without context. Not because something catastrophic happened, but because things have accumulated — tiny disappointments, unsaid words, expectations I never admitted I carried. The release feels involuntary, almost embarrassing, but also inevitable.
There’s a kind of fatigue that comes from pretending you’re composed. It settles into the body in places that don’t have names, making everything feel fractionally harder: breathing, stretching, thinking. It’s subtle but unmistakable.
What I actually want in those moments isn’t a solution. I want presence — mine, or someone else’s — without demands. Just acknowledgment that being human is sometimes overwhelmingly tender.
If a teenager asked me what this feeling is, I’d say it’s part of growing a heart that knows too much. If someone older asked, I’d guess they’d already know — the ache that appears for no single reason, but carries the weight of many small ones.
Today, I don’t feel balanced or brave. I feel raw in a way that makes me careful with myself. And maybe naming it is enough — not to fix it, just to stop pretending it isn’t there.
That’s where I am: inside the swell, letting it exist.
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