The Storm.

round and round and round till madness

I can’t stop. I can’t—everything moves too slow and too fast and it’s all at once. My head hums and screams and hums again, like a radio stuck between stations, only static, only noise, only me bouncing off walls I can’t see. I feel my skin, my hair, my teeth, my heart, all separate from me, all alien, all too much and not enough.

Boredom lives in time. No, it is time. It is sticky, it is thick, it drags my thoughts into corners and folds them into shapes that make no sense. I try to think—no, I need to think—but the thoughts are knives, or maybe they’re smoke, maybe they dissolve before I even see them. Everything I imagine is wrong, broken, like I’ve lost the key to the lock I’ve always carried.

I look at the sky. I look. I look. It’s big. It’s endless. And I am less than a dot. I could disappear. I could fold into myself and vanish, and it wouldn’t matter. No one would notice. No one sees the quiet falling-apart. They are all moving, moving, moving, and I am here, still, stuck, the inside of my skull shaking, cracking, spilling fragments no one will ever clean up.

I reach for things—words, hands, dreams, hope—but they are not there. There is only friction. Only grit. My mind is a storm that makes no sound, a hurricane of everything and nothing, circling, twisting, bending reality until it snaps. And I am inside it. I am inside it, and there is no exit, no door, no light, no rescue.

I bite, I scream, I scratch, I fall, I run in place. The clock ticks, but it does not exist. My pulse pounds, but it is not mine. I am unraveling. I am splitting. I am scattering. And yet—somehow—I am still breathing.

And I hate it here but I love it here. I'm grateful I'm still alive. I suppose I love life despite its attempt to crush me.