radiant garden

Day 3805 - 12 March 2026

Everything I do reminds me of you.

Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light, Richard Siken

well, i think you're beautiful <3

[art by me - neonscrapyard]

instagram || etsy

because i don’t feel very much alive anymore. let alone feeling very human anymore. and you rip open your flesh just to see if the torn nerves sending agonizing signals to your brain hurts worse than the pain you feel mentally. because i’m not sure it does.

and the excruciating urge to drive 150 miles just to scream at a large open body of water that how dare it think it’s so grand and superior when your pain would be overflowing if it took up the same space. creating floods so devastating it puts tsunamis to shame.

and the self sabotaging urge to try everything that is disastrous to your fragile body to see if you can find anything that hurts worse than the sinkhole in your chest. because i haven’t found anything yet and how do i get anyone to understand that i just want to meet death. because at least it cares enough to take the pain away without resisting.

and the dissociative urge to change your hair every few months to try to find a new version of you that even feels like you because every person you meet in the mirror is unrecognizable.

and i’m not sure whose body i have been wrongly placed into and whose hands that shake trying so hard to stay alive and whose mind i messed up and turned into a shipwreck and whose bones feel like they weigh a ton that i have to drag along with me.

i don’t know who that person is and i’m not sure that the person i’m supposed to be even exists. because i am sure that the person i’m supposed to be isn’t this. the pile of debris sitting on the shower floor. crying and fighting the urge to scream at the top of my lungs that i don’t want to be here anymore.

“you say sorry too much.” i know. i know. i’m sorry. i’m so sorry. i just… i’m scared. i have this awful, heavy fear that everyone will leave me. that you’ll hate me before i even get the chance to ruin it. so i apologize first. for everything. even things that aren’t my fault. even for breathing too loud. even for the way i think. i apologize for being me. i apologize for being difficult. for being too much. not enough. too emotional. too quiet. too strange. too clingy. too broken. i apologize for taking up space like i wasn’t meant to be here.

sometimes it feels like if i can hate myself enough, if i can beat everyone else to it, then maybe it won’t hurt as much when you do. maybe if i already rip myself apart, it won’t matter when you leave. i tear myself down before anyone else can. i make myself small. i make myself invisible. i make myself sorry. all the time.

i cover my ears. i shut my eyes. i curl into myself so tightly i forget how to let anyone in. i thought if i could just block out the disgust, the rejection, the disappointment, then maybe i’d be safe. but i blocked out the love too. i never let it in. i couldn’t hear it over the sound of me hating myself. i screamed over it. and now i wonder if anyone ever did love me, and i just didn’t know how to receive it.