ONEIROPHRENIA

For the epiphany that arrived only after destroying the visions of the future I once clung to, I write this as a reminder.

I used to consider myself cursed with awareness. Constant metacognition, endless psychoanalysis, always searching for patterns in silence, in behavior, in absence, in everything left unsaid. For a long time, it felt unbearably heavy. Learning how to live with that mind became its own long story.

But that same mind taught me discernment.

It taught me that not everything deserves prolonged attachment. Not every vision deserves devotion. And not every weight is yours to carry simply because you are capable of carrying it.

So I became more decisive.

More disciplined.

More aligned with the person I am trying to become.

Most noise around us exists only to distract people from themselves. But life is ultimately lived alone, through one's own consciousness, for one's own sake. Understanding that changed me. It taught me to stop romanticizing struggle and to stop building futures inside my head that reality itself never confirmed.

And I started carrying only what was mine. My work, my direction, my becoming.

This year I crossed things off a list that once felt impossible. I built. I finished. I moved forward. Quietly, consistently, and without waiting for external validation.

And perhaps that is why the sentence stayed with me:

"Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life."

Not because it is possible. But because there is something sacred in attempting to carry what feels impossible, and something even more sacred in knowing when to finally set it down.

I am not who I was.

And I am not sorry about it.

I still believe there is something beautiful about depth, about ambition, about loving life enough to take it seriously.

But only when those things are grounded in clarity.

Even if everything collapses, even if nothing works today or tomorrow, no matter how chaotic life becomes, how slow or how fast, how heavy or how light, I will keep praying, keep my faith, and continue forward, unbroken and unbothered.

Not because I understand anything, but because faith sometimes survives long after certainty dies.

Long ago, when darkness came, I used to feel as if the sky had abandoned me. I mistook silence for absence and suffering for the death of faith.

I was naive.

It took me years of doubt, psychological molding, and maturity to understand how these things truly work. Silence is not abandonment.

From that, I began to understand that solitude is unavoidable in certain seasons of life, that there are moments when a man is left alone with his thoughts, his fears, and the silence of his prayers. And that is why a man alone is a neighbor of God, because solitude strips away the ego and performance and leaves nothing between a human being and his prayers except truth