i'm somebody new

Putting taco salad ingredients in a jar for my lunch like 'wow, I really am a real person'

Planning so beautifully and perfectly that I can actively feel the world turning into a better place around me.

I no longer feel broken, I much prefer myself as I am, but never being covered by the "don't worry" shortlist can make you feel alone. Likely not on the longlist either. I'm not a candidate for the girlypop purification ritual. Not worth normalising. Burrowed too deep underground for it to be practical to dig up, just for my benefit. The wrong end of a trolley problem. Every individual piece is normal, sure it's normal, but becomes freshly unrecognisable when assembled. The most similar ones, on surface level, talk about feeling alone too.

I've never spoken a direct word about this in my life, maybe that's what's poisoning me. And yet I think people who really know me already intuit it, at least to some degree. So what’s even my hang-up about it? It’s hard to say. It’s either a ‘well, duh’ or a “what are you even talking about”, that’s sort of the problem. Hardly worth bringing up at all then.

It's the time of another revelation of that thing I've known the whole time but from a slightly different angle. The common expectation that keeps coating my tongue like a thick dust so that I walk around all day spitting and coughing and trying to scrape it off in between acting normal. I'm going to get clown lung and die before ever putting these things into practice.

I'm going to start putting more effort into convincing myself. I keep watching myself. I try to forget myself when it's useful. I gatekeep the actualities of my body (hot). I value my private thoughts. I whisper them into crevices, and sometimes I'm heard, and often I'm not. I start building monuments and then I forget about them again. I walk in them, forgetting everything else. I'm happy enough.

Happiness is being happy. I eat happiness off of pantry shelves and I'm happy when I don't think about it.