If I were operating at my best, I’d be Draco. If I were spiraling, I’d be Hermione. Most days I’m… somewhere between pretending I’ve got everything under control and quietly dissolving behind a glass tank.

I have a mental health condition that makes “containment” feel like safety. I’ve spent years believing that if I don’t stay perfectly composed -- no cracks, no tremors, no emotion showing -- the world will fall apart (or I will).

But the thing about emotion is: the more you try to trap it, the louder it gets. Like Hermione, I try to suppress things… and then they leak out sideways. Hypervigilance. Overthinking. A tone too sharp. A word too wrong. And then the shame spiral.

The longer I write The Hum, the more I realize: I’m basically trying to write my way out of my own containment grid.

Like Hermione, I’m trying to stop treating my feelings like volatile runes. Like Draco, I’m trying to look directly at the things that hurt without flinching. Like both of them, I’m trying to listen—to the body, the memory, the hum.

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