II

So tired it’s like my bones are running while my mind is stuck in mud.

I wake when the world sleeps,

and sleep when everyone else moves,

because being awake during the day is too loud, too bright, too much.

I miss myself… the loud, playful, reckless version of me.

The me who could laugh without thinking,

who could go out without fear,

who could feel alive in her own skin.

I see her sometimes in dreams or memories,

and it breaks me that she’s gone… or maybe just hidden somewhere I can’t reach.

I want to eat, I want to move, I want to talk…

but my body refuses.

I forget to eat, forget to take my meds, forget to be “normal.”

When I do try, everything feels like a mountain

my energy, my thoughts, my impulses, my fear, my guilt

all pushing against me at once.

I buy things I don’t need.

I cook at 3 a.m. because no one is there to bother me.

I scroll, I shop, I try to feel a spark of control.

And for a moment, it works.

Then the sun rises, the world wakes, and I’m left with myself again

exhausted, irritable, overwhelmed, lonely.

I want help, but I don’t know how to ask.

I don’t want to burden anyone.

I don’t want to be a “problem.”

So I stay quiet.

I hide in my small moments of elation, in my routines that no one sees,

and I pray that someone notices,

that someone sees the weight I carry,

that someone understands that even if I look calm,

inside I’m a machine breaking down,

trying to keep running,

trying to survive,

I get that our goals, success, money is important in this economy— in our 3D life, but still. #IHateItHere #Kalapastangan

with hands too small for thunder,

learning early that some emotions

were safer swallowed than spoken.

So anger never learned my name.

It just hovered— a feeling I could see,

but never touch.

My therapist said

I am too aware of my emotions,

so aware that I can’t

tell them apart anymore.

Like standing in a room of echoes

and not knowing which voice is mine.

Maybe that’s what happens

when little me meets pain too soon,

you grow up fast,

but your heart learns to walk

with its knees still shaking.

And when she said,

“Inna, you’re safe here,”

something inside me cracked—

not breaking,

just finally exhaling.

At the same time,

Taking it in was foreign,

Accepting it was weird,

For the first time,

I felt what safety sounds like:

soft, repeated,

I will be floating through galaxies,

drifting from universe to universe,