Twilight

Alas, nothing feels like home.

It’s always 1 a.m. when the silence finally feels like mine. The world is asleep, chasing dreams I can’t seem to hold onto, while I lie awake with the glow of my phone burning into my skin. Scrolling, scrolling, as if the next flick of my thumb might reveal an answer to the emptiness pressing in on me. The night is the only peace I know, yet it comes at the cost of the morning—when noise breaks through my walls, when my phone won’t stop ringing, when my heart beats faster than my thoughts can catch up. Still, for all the noise, I can’t find a reason. I can’t find meaning.

I ask myself, again and again: is this all there is? The world stretches out, vast and endless, but no matter where I step, I never seem to fit. The mold they built for me may not have been made for my shape. They want me to fold myself into their corners, but every time I try, I tear at the seams. Maybe I’ll never get that thing. Maybe I’ll never fit their picture of success. Maybe all I can do is trust that if I choose myself—if I believe, even blindly—things will find their way, even when skies stay gray.

Someday, I want to be brave enough to face the things that frighten me: to stand at the edge of my fear and not turn away, to meet the small terrors steering my life and tell them they don’t have the map anymore. A quiet courage that rearranges everything inside me.

Some nights, the spiral comes faster. I sip from the cup, numbing myself, only to feel like prey in a pit of snakes. I’m stuck in a twilight zone—caught between the person I am and the person I keep promising myself I’ll become. I say I won’t repeat it, that I won’t let myself fall into the same cycle. And yet, I do. Hoping—foolishly—that maybe this time will be different, that maybe the outcome will shift, that maybe there’s more to life than the shadows I’m walking through.

Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped in a dream, slipping from one version of reality to the next. Everything looks solid, but when I reach out, it dissolves in my hands. Streets blur into one another, faces fade before I can hold onto them, and everywhere I go, the same emptiness follows. Nothing feels steady. Nothing feels like home.

Trapped between two worlds, neither of them home. Everywhere I go, the same hollow echo. Doors open, and I’m tempted to roll the dice, to risk everything on the chance that the other side is better. But what if the price is too high? What if I gamble away more than I can afford to lose? And yet… I still step forward. I still slip back. I still whisper to myself that next time will be the one.

The truth is relentless: everywhere I stand, nothing feels like home. No walls embrace me, no rooms recognize me. Even when I scream, even when I fight to be heard, even when I swear I’ll make them see me—underneath it all, I’m still searching for the place where I can finally exhale. Where I can stop running from the emptiness. Where I can just belong.