somewhere i don't have to pretend
i was corrected today. a small word for a small violence. not wrong, not right. just... the shape of the world pressing its fingers into me again. professionalism, accountability, mission, alignment. i mouth them like prayers to a god i have never believed in.
my rent is paid by my ability to pretend. to nod, to carry, to perform care. as if care were something that could be filed, logged, measured, returned.
they say if you hate it, leave. go back, go home, go anywhere that is not this. but the beast does not end. it stretches, it follows, it waits in the wires. in the roads. in the water. in the quiet places too. there is no outside. there is only distances.
i used to think i would stay to be a wound in the center of it. a reminder that something refuses. but refusal grows tired when it has to clock in. when it has to smile. when is has to survive.
and now there are threads that tie me here. not chains (not exactly) but something softer, something h e a v i e r. a future that is not only mine, a love that lives elsewhere, a past that still breathes through me.
i ask myself, "if i leave, what am i leaving?"...."if i stay, what am i becoming?"..."if i run, does it end or does it follow?"
i have survived names for violence that do not fit in HR language. histories that do not fit in mission statements. i have been dust, animal, child, ghost, and now... employee.
here i am. not free, not captured. just continuing. looking for somewhere that does not ask me to pretend. looking for somewhere i can place my heart without translating it.
but for now. i clock in. i nod. i endure. and somewhere underneath it all. something in me refuses to disappear.
