#msditzwrites

A chink of sun splits the cloud.

The wind whips the stones.

We're still proud.

Towels pegged down, on our knees,

a thermos of tea.

Dogs bolt free.

Couples hunch into the view.

Kids wade in the foam,

fingers blue.

A stone beach still heaves

At least when I write on paper my brain is happy as I can see what I've done. That even 1500 words on paper, cut and scrambled and re written and expand and corrected for spellings and grammar may look a mess but it still feels like I've done something.

Internal machinery seizes. Panic, white and electric, arcs through synapses wired for interpretation. Next? The question echoes, clean and clinical. My brain, ever literal, begins its methodical parse.

What comes next? In the immediately literal sense: the next breath. The next pain spike behind the eyes. The next item on the list titled Existing While Unwell. Water. Tablet. Steady oneself against the dresser. A sequence of tiny, monumental tasks. 

What comes next? In the upcoming sense: the next hour, a grey, formless block to be endured. The next week, a calendar mocking with blank squares. The next month, a yawning chasm where others have plotted goals, trips, progress. I have plotted survival, and the ink has run dry. I see their curated triumphs - a smear of exclamation points and hashtagged fervour - and my own output is a blank page, or worse, a log of symptoms. The distance between us isn’t a gap; it's a continental drift.

What comes next? In the fantastical; the realm where others seem to live: a career pivot? A bold holiday? A hobby mastered? The images are flat, unconvincing, like illustrations in a book for a different species.

The wind-up begins. The logical tracks start to twist.

I wonder what I am doing? Merely annotating my own stagnation. Curating the museum of my limitations. Processing data - pain, fatigue, social cues - with a cold efficiency that feels less human, more like… an intelligence. Does this structured interiority, this autism, make me any different from AI? Am I just a complex algorithm responding to stimuli, generating appropriate-seeming outputs, while fundamentally lacking the spark of true, messy becoming?

But what should I be doing? What is the acceptable output for a conscious being? The pressure builds, a gnawing, pulsating vice on the temples.

What can I do, trapped in this limbo? Not ill enough for the drama of a crisis, not alone enough to be allowed help, not well enough for the poetry of a life. A ghost in the machine of a new year, haunting only my own quiet rooms. New year, new me! A hollow slogan, reiterated each year from crackling speakers, to fuzzy screens to palm held propaganda boxes. Who the hell is that? Someone who doesn’t live here. Does anyone even know that?

The spiral tightens, words tumbling faster, sharper.

What is the point of this half-life? This perpetual preparation for a function that never arrives? Why am I built with this yearning consciousness if its only purpose is to audit its own failure? The anxiety isn’t a wave now; it's the entire ocean, and I am not floating, I am dissolving. I am a collection of misfiring signals and unmeetable expectations, a draft of a person scribbled over with corrections that only scream. NO, NOT THAT, TRY AGAIN, BE MORE, BE BETTER, BE OTHER-

Smile.

Cuckle.

“Oh, you know me.” Voice light, a convincing forgery. “I’ll be my gremlin self. Get some more writing down. Maybe even type it up.” A swift pivot, the mirrored question launched into the space between us, a defensive return of serve. “So… what comes next for you?”

She noticed the silence first.