Go mad or turn holy.

From the edge....

I am beginning to despair, and I can only see two choices: go mad or turn holy.

Both feel like the same type of surrender, one to the noises in my head and the other to something vast and unseen. I’m not quite sure which one is worse, though: losing myself in the chaos or dissolving into peace.

Some nights, I wake and everything hurts a little. A dull, quiet ache coming from simply existing, from being alive enough to collect both memories and regrets. I lie still, watching the ceiling fade into shadow, and I wonder when I began to feel like a ghost in my own life. I wish I could throw off these thoughts that poison my happiness, but they cling on like ivy, sweet and suffocating.

There’s a strange pleasure in indulging sadness, like pressing a bruise just to feel something familiar. Maybe that’s why I let it stay. Maybe that’s why, instead of fighting the loneliness, I make a cup of hot chocolate for myself and leave the music playing softly in the dark. I sit quietly by the heater, half hoping the night will answer me back. I don’t know what I am hungry for—love, meaning, peace—they all blur into the same vague ache.

And everything I have begged for, cried for, and clung to with trembling hands has, in the end, slipped through my fingers. The things I thought would save me never did. Yet somehow, the things that truly shaped me came from nowhere. From moments I didn’t plan, from people I didn’t expect, from pain I didn’t understand until it passed. I think that is the quiet miracle of life: the best things appear when you least expect them. The first person who said that wasn’t lying after all.

Am I destined to be alone? I wondered. The kind of alone that lives deep in your chest, the kind that makes you sit beside a cooling cup of hot chocolate and stare at the window as if you could see your soul’s reflection in it. But then the world moves on, people are laughing somewhere out of reach, and I am here, wondering what it means to exist without being needed.

And yet, there’s something oddly comforting about it, too. Maybe solitude isn’t punishment. Maybe it’s a kind of quiet holiness—a chance to meet one-on-one with the person I’ve been too ashamed to meet. Maybe all this aching, this madness, is just life trying to pull me closer to myself.

And it really doesn’t matter how well you’re doing—those sad nights creep up on you. They find their way back to you like uninvited guests, settling in your bones, whispering memories of things you thought you had buried. And that’s okay; maybe those nights exist to remind us we still have hearts that can feel, that we haven’t grown too numb to ache.

Once a month, I go a little crazy. I cry over things I can’t name, laugh at nothing, and stare into the dark until my reflection feels like a stranger. But somehow, when the madness fades, I find myself breathing softer, seeing the world a little bit clearer. Maybe that’s what “turning holy” means—not sainthood, but survival. A kind of quiet faith in the beauty that hides beneath the pain.

So yes, I despair. I ache. I spiral. But when the sun rises, I make hot chocolate again. I play the same song. I open the blinds. And I let the sunlight remind me that even broken things can glow when the light hits them just right.

Overall, I think my life is beautiful because, despite everything, I am still here, and that alone makes life worth living again.