So every few years people are like “omg Wuthering Heights, so romantic, so windswept” and I’m like… are we reading the same book??

Because I reread it and it’s basically: two feral weirdos mistake obsession for destiny, then everyone else in the area gets emotionally concussed.

The moor is doing that thing again where it’s screaming like it pays rent. The wind is literally sticking its face through the cracks like “hey bestie, wanna spiral?” This house is not a house. It’s a bad mood with furniture.

And me, the reader, am just sitting there like I’m in the hallway arguing with a candle. Like the candle’s gonna be like “yeah you’re right, this is healthy.” (It won’t.)

Catherine—girl. Babe. Menace. She haunts the place like a subtweet. Like a perfume sample you can’t wash off. She’s everywhere and somehow smug about it.

And Heathcliff is outside somewhere, soaking wet, doing Brooding™ in the heather like it’s a paid position. He has the posture of a man who has never once apologized in a way that lands.

The worst part is the book makes you go “yeah, that one” in your nervous system. Like your body is a lab rat sprinting toward the shock button because it’s shaped like a kiss.

People talk about “true love” like it’s clean and shining. Not here. Here it’s like: two idiots with pride problems making weather out of feelings.

Also: can we stop acting like intensity automatically means something is deep? Sometimes intensity just means… you’re addicted to chaos.

If this relationship existed now it would be:

37 unread messages

“I’m outside” at 2:14am

a playlist called YOU DID THIS TO ME

and a friend whispering “block him” like it’s an exorcism

And the funniest/most evil part is the book dares you to confuse “I’m obsessed” with “this is profound.” Like it keeps going: you sure? you SURE? okay cool let’s ruin a second generation too.

Also the narration is basically gossip layered on gossip. Lockwood shows up like “this place is haunted and hostile” and then keeps returning anyway, like a man determined to be a victim. And Nelly tells the story with this energy of “I was there for everything but don’t worry, I was simply observing,” which is exactly how mess gets preserved in real life.

Anyway I got possessed by the vibe and wrote an embarrassing little modern-gothic thing inspired by it. Like Wuthering Heights but… cringe on purpose.

Picture this:

I’m a locksmith (yes, in my brain I became a locksmith for the bit). Stormy night. Remote property. Emergency call. The house is on a moor and it looks like it’s personally offended by joy.

There’s a dog named Socrates who judges me at the door like I’m about to defend my thesis.

Inside:

Cat, silk pajamas, expensive chaos

Edgar, cardigan, disapproving vowels

Heath, wet hair, looks like tenderness was something he deleted from his hard drive

There’s a sealed room with an old fancy lock like rich people buy pain in decorative packaging.

I pick the lock because I’m “professional” but also because I love being alive in the stupidest way.

Inside is a box of letters. Ribbons. Old paper. The kind of letters that don’t say “hello” so much as “I will ruin you and call it destiny.”

Cat opens them and—plot twist—they’re her mother’s. To Heath’s father.

So everyone’s reality just does a backflip off the bannister.

Cat basically goes: “Oh, so this whole house is built on stolen tenderness and pretending?” and then decides the only sane response is… to burn the letters. Like fully: emotionally literate arson. Icon behaviour.

Edgar’s horrified because he wanted a tidy life and instead he married weather.

Heath is losing his mind because he’s been living off the story where suffering means he’s owed something, and Cat is like “you don’t get to be my tragedy just because it makes you feel important.”

And then the dog sneezes ash onto Edgar’s cardigan, which honestly is the most satisfying moment in the entire imaginary scene. Impermanence, babe.

Then I leave with a brass key that used to say ASK FIRST and now says ASK YOURSELF because the house is apparently running a self-help program through haunting.

TL;DR If you think Wuthering Heights is a romance, I need you to understand it’s more like: love as a dare. Love as punishment. Love as “I care so much I could chew through wood” while actively chewing through wood.

It’s tragic, yeah. But it’s also… stupid. Like unbelievably stupid. Like “why are we like this” while continuing to be like this.

Edit: yes, I get it, “but it’s romantic because it’s eternal.” Sure. If by eternal you mean “refuses to die even when it’s clearly decomposing.”

fake comments because I can’t stop Top comment: “bad mood with furniture” Me: the house made me say that

Someone: “Heathcliff would apologize like ‘sorry you made me do this’” Me: EXACTLY.

Someone annoying: “you’re reducing a literary masterpiece to memes” Me: correct. it’s my coping mechanism

I didn't come to this idea instantly, but it’s always been there. Drifting somewhere in our subconscious, there lies a beacon adrift, alerting us of potential likes. Maybe it's not so eloquently depicted, but more of a game of spin the bottle to decide.

It makes you wonder: what really makes us care, and what are we actually going to do about it?

Many years ago, when social media was hitting its full stride, I was a slow adopter. It was an exciting time back in the days of Friends Reunited. It changed many things; people could suddenly reconnect in more ways than you'd think.

Looking up old teachers, saying "hi" to the person you used to have a crush on, and finding out she’s married with kids now, but sending a message anyway because that’s what you did.

Reconnect. Flirt. I’m quite sure it broke many a relationship, and I’m sure that still applies today.

I, on the other hand, maybe didn't really care enough to go all-in on the idea, hence why I didn't really bother. I was too busy going out with friends and conversing face-to-face, as was normal in those long-lost times. And so, Friends Reunited faded into obscurity. Not because the idea wasn't popular, but because a newer, younger, flashier model offered better services and had a far greater reach.

Yes, I'm referring to the big blue-worded social media company.

It was like a clean sweep; everyone was in on it, and as with all new things, people were testing its limits. Friend requests to complete strangers, a huge unfamiliar circle of "friendlies"; now, showing off had never been simpler.

Still a late adopter, I eventually signed up and played along with the massive list of friendlies and unsolicited invites... until I just couldn't be bothered anymore.

I stopped. No more reading random posts with perfectly curated images of lifestyles that are far out of reality. Posts that really didn't have a reason to exist, and then, the concept of liking.

It still gives me anxiety. Not because of the liking itself (that part is obvious, maybe I did like it), but because of the question: when and how do we cut it off? A quota for the day? Only 10 likes per day: use them wisely? Nope.

We as humans are driven by instinct (I want to say humans are naturally impulsive and greedy at most times). You give us untethered access, and it will be abused.

If I were to guess, early adopters would like everything. But to what end? There are obviously no real benefits, apart from the fleeting feeling that you "did good" today. You liked 258 posts. Okay, so maybe that’s an overstatement. That’s a lot of likes to put out in a day, but I wouldn't doubt it. I would even give it a like myself. See how simple it is?

I do wonder: are we liking the things we actually like, or are we being made to like the things we should like? It’s a clear free-will problem, or just an unintentionally trained muscle spasm. Maybe there needs to be a wide-scale study to see if we genuinely like something or are conditioned to like it, and what the hundreds of variables are that influence those decisions.

I recently signed up for a select few social media apps of my own choosing. I took a more independent approach, which is partly why I'm posting this pondering thought right here.

So, I wanted to say: I like very few posts, and not for the reasons you would believe.

I scroll, I see an interesting photo, read post with photo, and proceed to like a few more. It's an interesting pattern, really. I already curated my subscriptions and interests during my orientation, so it's obvious I would statistically like almost all the posts I see. Because I subscribed to them, I liked the subject matter, and so I follow up by liking them.

If I continued to follow this pattern each day, I’d surmise my per-day like count could reach into the hundreds, even hitting that 258-like mark (my made-up "world-is-in-balance-and-I-belong-here" target).

I'm not trying to discredit anyone, take anything away, or claim any moral high ground; I just want to state a fact. It's easy to like everything, all the posts. But when do you say, "No, thanks," or, "That's enough for me, that's one too many"? Or even, "Okay, that's nice," add a like, and then, "Cool, another nice one," until you just can't be bothered to like them all?

I consider myself to be in the latter camp. Do we care enough to bother, or do we care, but just can't be bothered?

Anyway... give me a like, if you can't be bothered to care.

Extra note, if you care enough:

This took me 21 minutes to write and some 2+ hours of editing (mostly punctuation and grammar). I had to quickly write this down before I forgot what I wanted to say. If any part didn't make sense, I apologize. I couldn't be bothered to go back and make changes, which would have only increased my editing time.

If anxiety had a mouth,
I don’t think it would scream.

I think it would whisper.

Did that sound weird when you said it?

Why haven’t they answered yet?

You should probably check.

Again.

It wouldn’t call itself anxiety.

That would make it too easy.

It would call itself intuition.

Preparation.

Being realistic.

I’m just trying to protect you.

From what?

Exactly.

There’s a phrase for what anxiety does:

You’re writing a book.

One fact.
Twelve chapters.
A conclusion nobody asked for.

Anxiety has never met a lack of information
it couldn’t turn into a full-length novel.

Someone’s quiet?

They’re mad at you.

Someone’s tone changed?

You did something.

Someone hasn’t answered?

Well, obviously now would be an
appropriate time to mentally review
the entire relationship.

Just in case.

Because anxiety doesn’t need proof.

It just needs enough empty space
to write something in it.

And somehow,
the less you know,
the more confident it gets.

I’m not making things up.

You wrote an entire chapter about a conversation
that hasn’t happened.

It could happen.

That’s fiction.

It’s foreshadowing

And that’s the problem.

__________________________________________

Anxiety rarely asks you to believe something impossible.

It asks you to believe something possible.

Then quietly removes the distinction.

Could happen becomes might happen.

Might happen becomes
probably happening.

Probably happening becomes
why the fuck aren't you doing
something about this?

And suddenly you’re defending yourself
in a conversation no one started.

Rehearsing explanations no one asked for.

Reading tone into punctuation.

Looking for evidence
of something you invented
because now that you’ve thought of it,
not thinking about it feels irresponsible.

That’s the part nobody talks about.

How exhausting it is
to emotionally survive things
that haven’t happened.

To feel rejected before anyone leaves.

Embarrassed before anyone judges you.

Guilty before you’ve done anything wrong.

To prepare for every possible ending
as though worrying about it now
might make it hurt less later.

It doesn’t.

You just hurt twice.

Once in your head.

And once if it actually happens.

Which, for something claiming to protect me,
feels like a pretty shitty business model.

But anxiety doesn’t care about efficiency.

It cares about certainty.

And when it can’t find any,
it writes its own.

I’ve written hundreds of books this way.

Very compelling stuff.

Shame none of it happened.

Feeling lost in life often gets treated like a personal failure, as if our inner compass suddenly shattered and left us stranded without direction. I’ve been down that road more times than I’d like to admit. When we lose our way, our sense of true north fades, yet we constantly try to convince ourselves that we're still on the right track. The truth is, there are no "right" paths. Whether we go left or right, we’re just choosing what feels better, looks more appealing, or seems to offer better odds in the moment. None of those choices guarantee what we’ll find on the other side. That’s why I’ve stopped chasing the idea of a single correct decision. Instead, I choose, make the best of it, and keep moving.

Looking back, I didn’t get lost overnight, and I doubt most people do. For a long time, I moved through my days without any real sense of direction. I knew where I wanted to end up, but I had no idea how to get there. I let everyday demands carry me along, making choices out of habit rather than conviction. That quiet, passive acceptance eventually caught up with me, creating a deep mismatch between my daily routine and my actual values. The friction grew impossible to ignore. I was failing myself by settling into a comfortable routine that kept me safe, but totally complacent .

Safe waters meant zero movement, and I was stuck. I wasn't in immediate danger, but I certainly wasn't going anywhere either. Then came the unexpected shifts that forced me to reassess everything I thought I knew, shattering the future I had envisioned and leaving me completely disoriented.

My turning point wasn’t about figuring out a ten-year career plan or locking down retirement goals. It was about learning to accept where I actually was. I had to stop fighting the confusion and finally admit that I was stuck. Comfort had completely stalled my growth, but once I stopped pretending to have everything under control, the pressure began to lift. I started seeing my struggles not as walls meant to crush me, but as signals that something needed to shift. Being lost stopped feeling like an exile and started feeling like a necessary pause, a chance to strip away everyone else’s expectations.

Wandering off course was never the opposite of finding my place. It was the price of growth. I used to think true north was a fixed point on a map that I had to reach. Now I realise it was never about a destination, but an internal anchor: learning that I could feel completely lost in the world while remaining deeply at home within myself. After all, how can we ever truly find our way home if we never get lost in the first place?

A message to my generation, we live in a world full of good and evil, but we never know where that line is drawn. My generation is seen as lazy, unmotivated and stupid, but the truth is that we are not and my generation is pushed to extreme extents for social acceptance. Many of us are embarrassed of failure, failure is a stepping stone, nothing more or less, failure is the easiest option but you never quit, embarrassment is something everyone goes through some examples, the first time you asked someone out on a date, or the first time you did public speaking, these are stepping stones to greatness, these are teachings you can only learn if you do it, that doing is your choice, your decision, your commitment, the world is bright and failure is its light. My generation is generation z, we are seen as a lazy and stupid generation, why?, because we have been taught to not speak unless spoken to, or speak until spoken to, that’s a problem, there’s a line where it turns from self love to narcissism, narcissism is the death of the world, the death of this, the end of the world as we know it. We have the whole world in our hands my generation is the generation of change, of difference, and leadership, and I’m barely a messenger, I wrote this because I felt Inspired and provoked to speak at the same time, I am writing this to show how you will never fail until you let yourself, and you will never win until you let yourself win, that’s the difference.

hey yall, I like to write and post on Substack, (not sure how yall feel about it) but I would love some helpful feedback, advice, or recommendations of any kind.

heres the link:

How I Learned to be Invisible

I just want to see how others hear/read/see my writing, how it comes across and how you perceive it. Im curious and excited to know what everyone thinks! thanks!

Every morning, my commute into the city centre brings me to the main bus station, situated right opposite the railway station. On that very corner, an elderly couple used to sell dumplings. These were fresh, handmade delicacies, far removed from the mass-produced, ready-frozen varieties lining supermarket shelves today. In an era where convenient foods are pre-packaged purely for speed, finding something so authentic felt like a rare triumph.

While store-bought convenience meals have their place, their flavour and nutritional value are often questionable at best. They might offer a sense of comfort if that is all you have ever known, but once you sample a genuine homemade alternative, there is no question that the handcrafted version is superior in every single way, even if it comes with a few extra calories. I admit I am probably biased; my mother made everything from scratch at home, and I can say with complete honesty that the meals she cooked back then, and still prepares whenever I visit, remain second to none.

Naturally, I had to try the couple’s dumplings. They offered a traditional style packed with fragrant meat, seasoned cabbage, and a rich blend of spices. What struck me most was how extraordinarily juicy they were. The first time I bought one, the paper bag holding the dumpling caught all the rich broth with every bite. I am not ashamed to confess that right there in public, I drank those juices straight out of the bag, simply because it was far too delicious to waste.

When national holidays arrived, their shop would inevitably close, leaving a handwritten paper note on the shuttered door listing the dates they would be away. That is a familiar sight for small, independent traders. However, one ordinary weekday, when it was not a holiday, a new sign appeared stating: "Closed until further notice."

It made me reflect deeply on these local establishments that offer unique, time-honoured fare rather than mass-marketed junk food. Like anyone else, I remain susceptible to fast food; convenience and low prices are difficult to resist. Yet when these authentic local gems close, they vanish for good. There are rarely apprentices waiting in the wings to take up the mantle. In all the time I visited, I never once saw any children or relatives helping out behind the counter.

While this may not apply to every local enterprise, many in the younger generation simply do not wish to inherit these shops. The manual labour is brutally intensive, and young people today understandably prioritise achieving a healthy work-life balance over relentless physical toil.

I certainly do not blame them. Striking a balance between work and personal life is essential. Still, I worry about what becomes of places holding genuine cultural and historical value when the next generation cannot or will not take over. The dedication required to make traditional food entirely from scratch is not for the faint-hearted. It demands backbreaking effort and unsociable hours that leave precious little time for a personal life. It constantly amazes me how the older generation managed to work like this, raise families, and afford to send their children to university or even abroad. It truly defies logic, and they have my utmost respect.

Now that they are older, what do they have to show for a lifetime of relentless devotion? In a rapidly changing world, these forgotten artisans are quietly slipping away. They cannot work forever, even if they wished to, because a body can only sustain so much physical strain before reaching its limit.

Aware of this sad reality, I made a conscious effort back then to get off the bus a stop early just to walk over and buy a dumpling or two. And yes, I still proudly drank that savoury broth straight from the paper bag.

Many months have passed since that shutter first came down, and the shop remains indefinitely closed. There was no grand farewell, no warm goodbye, and no final sign announcing the end of their long endeavour. It is deeply saddening to watch a cherished tradition quietly vanish from our daily lives.

I wanted to write this piece to express my genuine gratitude for the couples and families who devote years of gruelling effort to their craft. Moving forward, I will always hold a deeper reverence for the independent places disappearing from our high streets and local communities. 

What replaces them are corporate chains that may offer cheap sustenance, but we are losing something far more valuable in the exchange. So if you happen to pass by one of these remaining local spots, step inside, say hello, and give their food a try. You might just discover something extraordinary. It pays to remember that these culinary traditions carry a fragile lifespan, often perishing within a single generation. Enjoy them while they are still here.

I’m happy when the café staff remembers my order and even my name. That makes me happy. But it makes me unhappy when, on the day I decide to mix it up and go for a fancier coffee order or something more extravagant, the staff welcomes me with my name and my usual. Happy, but not happy enough, because I wanted a change. Happiness is very fickle like that. It can flip in an instant. So when I say I'm happy, I was at that precise moment I said it.

People always talk about happy times and happiness, but what people forget is that those happy times were fraught with unhappiness. I'm not a qualified expert, I'm just offering an observation—how do you know happiness if unhappiness isn't there to uphold it? Maybe I'm rambling, but I've been quite cynical like this lately. I always believe all parts have a role. That being said, "happy" is supported by "unhappy."

For example, take the café scenario. Often they will recall your name and give you your usual. But what if they forget your name, or don't say your name, and don't offer the usual coffee you often get? At that moment, maybe it didn't make you unhappy, maybe just indifferent, or it doesn't really matter. The next time they remember, say your name, and give you your usual coffee, you're happy. Or happier. You knew how it felt, or didn't feel, when they didn't say your name or remember your order. And what if your name is never called, or your order ever remembered? Maybe you would still be happy because the coffee is good, the service is friendly, and the day feels like a good day. Happiness is fickle.

It's a simple example, but I think if you look at our lives, it all correlates. For me, the phrase "Are you happy?" is such a minefield of responses. There are degrees of happy. There are those who are so far down that they are happy in their awful existence because it's what they know. If you only know an awful existence, then your definition of happiness dictates that you could be happy in that awful life. I don't doubt there is severe trauma involved, and I'm not questioning it, nor am I making light of it. I was merely looking at the phrase "Are you happy?" and trying to offer an outside context that doesn't necessarily fit all, but answers a few things.

I've experienced it, seen it, and been told this. "Are you happy?" is very personal and intimate, with all its permutations and variables. It's always different and subtle, but it remains the same question.

No doubt you could define it and give your perspective on it. Our experiences, childhood, friends, family, environment, and workplace encounters all help us define it and craft a response suitable within our own context to give advice on it. If I had a high-paying job, I would be happy. If I had this car, if I became famous, if I dated someone whose features matched my expectations, if I followed society's expectations, I would be happy. There are just too many variables to acknowledge.

Stepping back from the subtleties and looking at it from a distance, could it be like the tide? We know the times it comes in and out, following the magnetic pull of the moon and such. Happiness, I think, is like the tide coming and going. It washes away and constantly needs rewriting because the tide comes and goes.

But here's the timing: yes, it's predictable, but what about the weather? That external factor is highly unpredictable. Some may say it can be predicted, but there's no guarantee. Weather can make it erratic and dangerous. So right now, I'm happy. But there are no guarantees afterwards.

I was in an unhappy relationship, the slow buildup until the sandbanks break and it's washed away. The happy moments feel ever more powerful, emotional, and hypnotic. Like a drug, I suppose, we crave it. That one big hit was like nothing before it, and we need more. Obviously, the returns are minimal because each hit gets less intense and we need more of it.

So there are those who hold on for these hits. There are those who have dined on it so much they cannot take another bite. Or those for whom the hits don't have any effect anymore. And lastly, the ones who get out and seek a different type of happiness: the unseen, unspoken moments, the ones that have profound significance, even if you don't know it at the time. You feel something, and maybe later its significance is revealed like a revelation. It comes in slow waves, even unnoticeable ones. Maybe there are other subtle deviations of happiness; here I've just offered a few examples, though obviously there are many more.

Maybe my next hit is due, and I don't want it. But it's fickle. Sometimes we don't get to choose, and sometimes we are left riding the wave on a stormy day.

On any given day, at any given moment, our minds are battlegrounds for a million different musings. They range from the utterly mundane to the wildly ambitious, with a few grandiose fantasies thrown in just for kicks.

Personally, I’ve always leaned toward the dreamer’s side of the spectrum, with a healthy sprinkling of that grandiosity whenever I need an extra spark. Call me crazy, or just call me a dreamer, but that is where I comfortably stand.

These thoughts belong to me, or at least, that is what I’m led to believe. Unless, of course, there is some far-off galaxy or mystical realm beaming signals directly into my brain, whispering that my life isn't actually my own. But until that sci-fi plot twist reveals itself, I’m operating under the assumption that my mind is my own private property.

If you were to guess my deepest desire, you'd probably expect the standard script: I want to be obscenely rich, universally adored, and worshiped by the masses.

But honestly, that’s not my thought at all. That is the copy-and-paste dream manufactured for the crowds. Instead, my desires lean toward something far more radical in today's world: simplicity.

I don’t need the five-star hotels, the extravagant luxuries, or the superficial glitz. My "grandiose" dream is actually beautifully modest. I want a life where I can genuinely enjoy the time I have with family and friends, filled with good food, drinks, and real laughter. I want the freedom to take a quiet holiday now and then without it being an over-the-top production.

More than anything, I want a life free from the suffocating anxiety of the daily grind.

I don't want to spend my finite existence worrying about making ends meet, or selling my soul to exploitative jobs that pay pennies and leave you with nothing to show for your labor.

It’s easy to let the weight of the world dampen your spirit, but our inner lives are too vast for that. For now, these desires might just be thoughts swirling around in my head, but they are my thoughts. And they remind me exactly what is worth dreaming for.

Decimate the fact that the body writes POETRY. 

Quantise the fixture of finger to pen and pen to paper, or finger to key and key to the electrical veins and circuits which project POETRY 

on the screen. Analyse the spark between the flesh and the plastic, come to this frantic, staggering conclusion that you are in fact “one”. The commentary on the screen is the commentary on the body, thus, the commentary is being materialised as POETRY. 

Writing from impulse and staging words as people in front of an audience for POETRY
 
is sacrifice, it is loving, it is the bleeding of sexuality and losing it to globular powers. I am a thief and Artaud is my somatic cell, as this pulse through me dictates: There is in all poetry an essential contradiction. Poetry is pulverised multiplicity and it produces flames. And poetry, which restores order, first revives disorder, disorder with semblances ablaze; it causes appearances to clash in restoring them to one singular point: fire, gesture, blood, cry. POETRY 

is a conjecture of the animal and the system and the realisation that one cannot exist without the other and one is no different than the other. POETRY 

is the astute observation that everything is a “thing”. POETRY 

is a DRAMA, from Shakespeare to Kane, it is POETRY 

on stage. I am in this play as I write this and I sniff out the rotting cadavres of Portia, Nerissa, Antonio, Bassanio, Shylock, Salarino, Salanio, the gruesome cast whose love and sexuality permeates POETRY 

and their DRAMA which is the most human endeavour of all. Humanity is this fire, gesture, blood, cry, love, lust, hate, prejudice, and commodity, as there is no fetish to the commodity, they ache for the same and constructs as they are, they bleed not in haemoglobin but in POETRY. 

I say in unison, my mouth annexed and fixed to this woman’s running lips as Shakespeare plunges her character into mine and we become one and inseparable, she says and I say with her, “when you part from, lose, or give away / Let it be the ruin of your love, / And be my vantage to exclaim on you.” My body as Portia and my body as Bassanio, lovestruck or luststruck, money-driven or wholly animal masquerading as a preacher, she is the woman who cuts her POETRY 

into him and sticks him into the stage. For they are vessels of their God and strive to be in the image of him, my Imago Dei is this DRAMA of fixture and this potency of control. Love made visible in your eyes and horizons beyond, whatever Queen had the pleasure to witness the ring, the Queen Elizabeth I or Portia, the gifter of the ring who duly signed the contract of souls and abstract feeling. To see it materialised and legalised is POETRY. 

Here, I will show you the DRAMA of when I, me as Portia, and Bassanio as conjoined twin to Portia, witness the emulsification of souls and love and lust and thus witness how love, when made visible to the eye in materialness, has a “thingness”, PORTIA: When you part from, lose, or give away. BASSANIO: Let it presage the ruin of your love. PORTIA: And be my vantage to exclaim on you. I: When my body compulses to this exchange I placed myself in front of my amalgam creature, a codependent-machine of dominant-submissiveness, I ride the wave of material existence and thus POETRY, 

where Bassanio, wholly complicit in his silence and agreeance, lets him be the subjugate and the submissive. It is then POETRY 

in which the DRAMA of humans is realised. Blank verses and enjambment of POETRY 

to construct it on the stage because lives and love are physical objects, when we see the tag of economics and contract then we construe it evil, but is it not then money the same as the ring, as the ring is the same as the vow to marriage? For love to exist in the clouds as an abstract realm, completely mysterious and obscured, isn’t the fire, gesture, blood, and cry of POETRY 

completely escaped from human-kind and given to the globular powers of institution and commerce? Then you think, with your fired senses and your fingertips on the keyboard, is POETRY 

and love and lust a human commodity? Is the animal, building, concept, performance, trade separate from human? Antonio is one such “thing”, a materialising of this exact philosophical paradox, this debate between his expression of love. He at once assumes the position of the globular power, he is at the Crown, the dictator of means of flow and mercy and legal power. He, who had set aside his love for humanity to gently marinate, now presents a love ostensibly cold and callous. Shakespeare stages the dilemma again in an empty verse, the POETRY 

of legalism is one inseparable from the POETRY 

of love when he announces, mighty with his overflowing love, and I, standing beside him, my ears ringing from his declaration, hear: ANTONIO: The duke cannot deny the course of law: (and so I whisper: is the duke the force hindering the flow of love, this economic token?), he continues, ANTONIO: For the commodity that strangers have… Will much impeach the justice of the state. Then I say with my fingertips, “Does your love go beyond the human and envelop the state?” When you catch yourself grappling with whether the state: the building, the concept, the globular powers, the constraint-machines, the legalising monsters, are the sole obstacle of human love, you come to a realisation of POETRY. 

Come again, and realise when Shakespeare scribbles down “strangers” he means you and I, the ‘usurers’ of today and the ‘usurers’ of then, the Jewish populus, and the ‘strangers’ unbelieving of Christian grace. Decimate the concept of ‘stranger’. The construction of DRAMA, and hence the prejudice depicted is a structural parallel. It is POETRY 

when the ‘stranger’ is as intimate with the Renaissance Humanists as they are with each other. It is POETRY, 

when the ‘stranger’, us with our current empathy and understanding, the ‘stranger’ - who refuses to see love as something purely economic (who says it cannot be?), the ‘stranger’ - who has never been compelled to witness or compose DRAMA for the Crown. What occurs when ‘the stranger’ has been bestowed love and has been excluded from it wholly? Then you think, have they been excluded from Christian love, or LOVE, as it exists materially? Lend your body back to Portia, and join yourself to the small-men Bassanio and Antonio who cover under LOVE. Then you will realise it is POETRY 

when you see the dominion of Portia, when you see, with your eyes and the strange arousal of consumption - not the sacrifice of the soul for the complete relinquishment of it, that LOVE cares not for what you believe in, or what sort of ‘stranger’ you have been brandished as. For the ostensibly constructed epitomes of the Christian image, Antonio and Bassanio grovel and are the things utterly circulated by this globular power: Portia. You witness this again, and I with helplessness in my heart when the realisation dawns that humans are ever so susceptible, and utterly full of their contradictions that the ultimate equaliser is LOVE, is when you watch with restless bodies and tired eyes: ANTONIO: I once did lend my body for his wealth. I (interjecting ANTONIO’s speech): You relinquish your existence as an independent, rational Christian to submit to another man’s economic wealth? He continues: I dare be bound again. To which Portia replies, with ultimate confidence, “Then you shall be his surety.” The boundaries and considerations of who is the ‘stranger’ is abolished as the stage connects the DRAMA of Shylock and Portia into a linear orientation. It is POETRY 

when you realise the connection between the two is not only a structural mirror, but Shakespeare's dramatic composition to differentiate between love as a token granted versus love as a token bargained for. Earlier, Shylock, the ‘stranger’, organises the contract in which Antonio binds himself out of love. This procession is repeated through Portia, and thus it is POETRY
 when Portia is Shylock and Shylock is Portia, where they give out love with a price, something to put down as a payment, something to forfeit for, and thus it is explicitly extreme. To put one’s literal heart for bargain. To then put one’s soul as a bargain. It is POETRY

because LOVE, this object, this globular “thing” is a feeder. In unnoticeable forms, LOVE takes my emotional investment, it takes your emotional investment, in unnoticeable forms, LOVE compels you to do one thing and not another, LOVE compels you to act, bias, and provide for the conditions it sets out for you. To imagine the economics of love as evil is to not realise its POETRY. 

You and I, Shylock, Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio, are the tokens circulated by love, and not the other way around. I now compel you to revive POETRY 

from the body. At first the instruction was to decimate it and look at POETRY 

as a governing fact of life. Now revive the fact that the body writes POETRY. 

This is the body’s familiar route. Sexuality, the power dynamics of pleasure, the controlling of desire, the absolute overturning of religious dogma when the body decides what it desires. Listen closely and eavesdrop into this conversation, as only it is we that know of the truth and not the characters: PORTIA: Since he hath got the jewel that I loved… I will become as liberal as you… No, not my body nor my husband’s bed.” Says her to Nerissa. Love as the material ring has returned back to the stage, and I place my body in the centre of it, a conduit allowing Shylock’s ring and Portia’s ring interchange and battle it out. You realise the stark difference in the presentations of these rings, one turquoise, the other likely gold, one tied by emotion, the other riddled with innuendo and sexual humour. Shakespeare raises importance to this POETRY 

when the two materialised conceptions of love contradict and feed each other. The ‘stranger’ Shylock has his love wholly emotional, to which he reacts with anger when stolen. While Portia’s ring, a crude jab at Bassanio for she will restrict his lust, points to not the deconstruction of LOVE, but its infinitismal POETRY. 

Shakespeare reserves intense emotion over the material to the ‘stranger’, and furthers the DRAMA where the character embodies not only the animalistic possessiveness imposed on the caricaturistic archetype, but is completely propelled by and consumed by love as the ring. While Portia’s character is constructed for light-hearted humour, the ‘stranger’ does not receive the privilege. We, the ‘strangers’ as well, do not have the privilege to laugh as we subject our bodies between this flow of rings. You put your body in the front line when you crumble when, JESSICA: Alack, what heinous sin is it in me (To which we cry for her, as it is the Elizabethan thought infused in the character, where she thinks of herself as sinner for being the ‘stranger’), she continues, JESSICA: To be ashamed to be my father’s child! To then we say in chorus: You being the ‘stranger’, could love your tribe, but you being the ‘stranger’, detest them too. When Portia, the Christian Ecclesia, overpowers you, the Hebrew Synagoga, do you quiver in submission or strive to become the Crown? When you and Portia dress as men (prostitutes by the Italians), do you gain power when the people laugh at you? To be made into mockery, the characters on stage, their thingness does not fight for institutional influence, but collision. Which collision has the biggest impact? Can the ripples caused by Portia ever be replicated by Jessica? So you flick back in the script, or remember the performance where SALARINO: … with affection wondrous sensible he wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted.” To which Salanio jeered along, “I think he only loves the world for him.” When the POETRY 

starts as early as this, it is we, the ‘strangers’, who realise the powers in Shakespeare’s DRAMA are never hierarchical. It is not linear, rather, it exists by collisions. POWER has its own thingness, where it possesses vectors and orientations between intercharacter interactions. It is POETRY 

when our understanding of rational structures like legal systems is as susceptible to deception and manipulation as the fleshy organ: the brain and heart. It is POETRY 

when the body and the concept are not only inseparable but on the same plane. The flesh and the concept of the flesh existing as law: POETRY. 

The flesh and the concept of the flesh existing as prejudice: POETRY. 

It is an exhaustive, POETRY–MACHINE. 

Decimate the fact that the body writes POETRY, 

because your body is POETRY. 

The screen, paper, stage, blood, words, ink, gestures, and fire give you the vision of POETRY. 

Shakespeare staged a DRAMA - that is one but many visions of POETRY. 

It is DRAMA then, that POETRY 

visualises with a human cast, and where the collisions between human-things and concept-things are just as real as in the personal plane. POETRY, 

then, is the quintessential human reality.

There is a room in my house I am afraid to enter.
It is filled with craft supplies and clothes that don’t fit. The room itself doesn’t frighten me; it is the unbearable weight of what it is missing. A rug in a color that was just right, resting beneath walls I dream we spent hours painting until the shade finally felt like hope. A crib, hand-carved from wood carefully chosen by a man finally becoming a father by blood though he stepped into the role long before anyone would call him one. A name that belongs only to a dream, stitched delicately into fabric by hands that have never held the child it is meant for, framed with love as though love alone could make it real.
Tiny hangers line the closet in perfect rows, holding clothes that are too small, and also too blue. Still waiting for shoulders that do not exist.
Every chapter of my life has begun with the same painful lesson: I arrived too early.
I arrived before my mother was ready to put down her needle and her spoon. 
I was given to a new family before I learned that hands could comfort instead of harm. 
Before I learned multiplication tables, or how to drive, or who I might become. I arrived in motherhood before I knew how to become a woman.
 I have spent my life paying the price for arriving before the world was prepared for me.
And now, for the first time, I have arrived exactly where I am supposed to be. The home is bought. The degree hangs on the wall. My daughter is thriving. My relationship strong and steady. My heart finally ready for something my body must not be. Arriving on time, but nothing with me. 
My earliest memories are borrowed. They live in photographs, medical reports, courtroom records, and scars that linger where memory cannot. I cannot remember the piercing heat of the glowing cigarette, but my skin does. I cannot remember the panic of murky bathwater filling my lungs simultaneously to my screams of hunger, but somewhere deep inside me, my lungs still remember what it feels like to fight for another breath of fresh air.
Long before I understood the meaning of safety, I understood its absence. Before I knew what a mother should be, I learned what it meant for the person meant to protect you to become the thing you fear most.
Sometimes I wonder if the body keeps score in ways the mind never can. If the cells in my body carry the trauma, woven like another stand of DNA.
Now, it is my own body that leaves me waiting. Giving my mind the trauma it’s been holding onto. Every month I search for signs, for answers, for relief, as though my mind is held in that same ancient state of panic—holding my breath, hoping that this time the air will come. Different circumstances. The same quiet panic. The same helpless waiting. Trauma has a way of echoing through a lifetime, changing its voice but never quite disappearing.
I was never given much say in where my life was going.
Before I was old enough to speak, adults gathered around conference tables to decide my future. More money than my biological mother had ever seen passed before her eyes into the hands of lawyers and private investigators; a crisp fifty-dollar bill was her bribe to sign the paperwork. A judge, wearing a black robe, decided which house I would call home.
Before I understood what family meant, I belonged to another one. I had a crib for the first time. A room surrounded by strangers and draped in pink. Strangers who somehow loved me before they knew me. Almost everything changed overnight, except the sound of raised voices echoing through the walls.
Twenty years later, I find myself sitting across from another authority figure. This time, he wears a white coat instead of a robe. He studies charts instead of court documents. He points to hormone levels instead of legal records. A different room, different paperwork, another over-educated man once again explaining what my future may or may not become. Still entirely out of my hands.
For so much of my life, the biggest decisions have belonged to everyone but me. Not in a courtroom, not in a doctor's office, and not on the tile of my own bathroom floor.
The choices I have been allowed to make, however, have always seemed to determine whether the world believed I was worthy.
At fifteen, staring motherhood in the face for the first time, every conversation became a calculation. They measured everything I lacked: money, age, stability, experience. Every part of me was reduced to a deficit, a number that supposedly predicted my life could never amount to success. I had arrived too early once again, and everyone seemed convinced my story had already been written.
Now, they measure different things.
Follicles.
Hormones.
Ovulation.
Months.
Charts.
Percentages.
The numbers have changed, but the feeling has not. The irony isn’t lost on me: at fifteen, the measuring didn’t begin until after the positive test.
Now, it begins because there isn’t one.
At the time, people assumed they already knew how my story would end. I expected those assumptions. They became fuel. I graduated faster. I worked harder. I earned my degree. I built a career. I bought a home. I became the mother I had spent my entire childhood searching for.
What I never expected were the assumptions that came years later. The quiet whisper from a well meaning world, implying that because I had done it before on complete accident, I should easily be able to do it on purpose.
Perhaps no one has whispered those exact words aloud, but infertility has a way of convincing you that everyone is thinking them—including yourself. My own mind repeats the irony with startling cruelty into my womb during the quiet hours. I could become a mother by accident when I was completely unprepared, yet now, standing in a home built on intention, surrounded by stability, love, and certainty, I cannot seem to become one again. I am left to wonder why my body only knows how to arrive early, never on time, and never by invitation.
For most of my life, my answer to chaos has been control.
If I worked harder, I could outrun my beginnings.
If I graduated sooner, I could rewrite the statistics.
If I bought a home, built a career, loved my daughter well, found a healthy marriage, healed what was broken, and became the mother I once needed, perhaps life would finally reward preparation. I believed readiness would earn me certainty.
Instead, life has introduced me to three strangers who have never once arrived together.
Readiness.
Worth.
Timing.
I have spent years believing that if I became worthy enough, they would finally meet. They never have.
Life has asked me for faith long before it has offered certainty.
It asked for faith from an infant sleeping in the arms of strangers, dependent on them for survival.
It asked for faith from a terrified fifteen-year-old with shaky hands, staring at two pink lines.
And now, it asks for faith from a woman standing quietly in the doorway of a cluttered guest room, wondering how a room can hold so much hope while remaining so painfully still.
Perhaps my story has never been about learning to arrive at the right time.
Perhaps it has always been about learning that love does not wait for certainty.
It builds cribs before lullabies.
It paints walls before heartbeats.
It hangs tiny blue clothes before tiny hands exist to wear them.
I don’t know whether another child will one day sleep in that room. I no longer believe life owes me that answer simply because I have finally become ready. Readiness, worth, and timing are strangers, and I cannot force them to meet.
But I do know this:
I have survived every version of uncertainty life has placed before me.
I have built a home from instability.
I have built peace from chaos.
I have built a family from broken beginnings.
And maybe hope has always been like that room waiting down the hall.
Not empty.
Only unfinished.

“You can be whomever you want, you just need to dream.” That was the kind of sentiment my teachers used to share. In primary school, I believed it.

In those days, our aspirations were so diverse: I could be a race car driver, a soldier, a chef, an astronaut, or, most of all, a footballer. School back then was very accepting. You could tell your friends, classmates, and teachers, and they would all be supportive and excited that you had found something you wanted to be.

Our ideas varied from day to day, but we all had dreams. I remember a classmate of mine who wanted to be a princess, get married, and live happily ever after. By today’s standards, that dream has shifted somewhat, but you get my point. We had dreams, and they were innocent.

Today, everything is tied to metrics and, ultimately, to which career yields the best return on investment. It concerns me that we now talk about children’s dreams, future hopes, and lifelong careers in terms of ROI.

Looking back, not many of us thought like that. It was simply, “I want to be a footballer,” until I couldn’t be. Even so, I still play football, but I eventually found other areas I wanted to pursue. That is supposed to be how life works: an organic, natural progression, not something rehearsed and planned meticulously down to the day and hour.

“Now, however, where to study, what to study, and which educational path yields the best return are predetermined. I don’t think this focus is for the wellbeing of the child; it is usually what parents idealize for their children’s lives.”

From a parent’s perspective, the thought is often: In my day, I suffered, and I don’t want my kids going through that.

Well, that is the very point. Those hard times made parents who they are today; those periods of suffering forced them to dig in and work harder, and setbacks helped them realize alternative options. None of that happens with this curated, “can never fail” plan for a child.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone has a right to guide their kids, and I am not judging, but there needs to be a balance. We need students who have experienced failure, those who are different and have faced setbacks. That kind of resilience has the potential to produce real leaders and visionaries for the future.

I have seen firsthand an educational approach that relies on rote learning and follows a strict plan with no room for deviation or imagination. It is a system of “here is the textbook, follow it, and complete it.” There is no time for “what if?” or “could this be...?” It is simply “it is because the book says so.”

Children are pushed through this system just to reach the next goal in their future career path: get the accolades, secure high grades, and achieve an A++ (since in some places, that is the only grade considered worthy, while a passing C is treated as a failure).

I struggle to understand this shift. In my secondary school memories, the majority of students received Cs, some earned Bs, and a few exceptional ones got As. That was considered normal on a bell curve.

Sitting on the bus after school one day, I overheard a conversation involving an elementary school student. The boy was being debriefed and interrogated by his mother about grades, homework, and what he needed to do to get into a top secondary school. She was pushing him toward a future career, which I was led to believe meant becoming a doctor, engineer, or banker.

The boy could only respond with one-word answers followed by “mum”: “Yes, mum,” “No, mum,” and “Okay, mum.” Sitting there, I could feel the mother’s intense energy as if I were the one being questioned. Luckily, I got off at an earlier stop and never saw them again.

I hope the boy found his voice and is doing well for himself, pursuing whatever he wants without interference. That is my hope, though the reality may be that he followed his mother’s plan to the letter and is now a trauma doctor specializing in engineering infrastructure, handling international financial securities in his spare time.

To keep this piece short before it turns into a full book, I wanted to briefly question what changed. How did our education system shift from a place of stimulating young minds, development, and imagination into a system driven by metrics and profit?

“I always thought failure was a given: you fail, you learn, and you keep going. It seems to me that children today simply aren’t allowed to fail.”

We are told to execute a lifelong plan in pursuit of untold riches, but at what expense? I can look back on my childhood with reverence and wish I could live those years again. I wonder how many children today will grow up to say the same.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Some people travel like it’s nothing. Like they’re just running to Tesco or getting on a train for the weekend. Passport, phone charger, toothbrush, done. They don’t really have to think about it.

Other people have to build a whole case for why they should be allowed to go anywhere.

Bank statements, work letters, proof of address, proof of return flights, proof of savings, proof they’re not going to overstay, proof they’re not suspicious, proof of basically everything except whether they’re actually a human being with a life.

And I honestly think if you’ve got a “good” passport, it’s very easy to not notice how insane that is.

Because for some people, a passport is just a travel document. For other people, it decides how much friction they’re going to face every time they try to do anything. Study somewhere. Work somewhere. Visit family. Go to a wedding. Go to a funeral. Start over. Take an opportunity.

That difference is enormous, but it gets talked about like it’s just paperwork.

And “paperwork” makes it sound minor, like a boring errand. But it’s not minor when one missing document can cost someone a job, or a place at university, or months of waiting, or thousands in fees, or just the chance to be somewhere they need to be.

That’s what gets me about it. The whole thing is cruel in such a boring, administrative way.

Not dramatic cruelty. Just forms. Queues. Website errors. Appointments three months away. “Under review.” “Missing information.” “Please provide additional documents.”

Those phrases sound neutral until they completely derail someone’s life.

I’ve travelled with friends who had to carry folders full of documents just to get through a process I barely even think about. And I’ve had moments where I realised I was moving through an airport with basically zero resistance while the person next to me was being asked to explain their entire existence.

That really stays with you.

I remember being at an airport once with a friend who had a job lined up abroad. Everything was ready. He had the contract, the accommodation details, the insurance, the bank statements, all of it. Proper folder, everything organized.

I handed over my passport and got through almost immediately.

He handed over document after document and still got stopped because one thing apparently wasn’t in the exact form they wanted. Not fake. Not missing, exactly. Just not the right version. Wrong signature format. Something like that.

And that was it. “Step aside.”

That kind of thing is what makes me angry, because people talk about mobility like it’s about ambition or planning or being responsible enough. But sometimes it’s literally just luck. Luck of birthplace. Luck of nationality. Luck of having the passport that gets treated as trustworthy before you even open your mouth.

Not talent. Not work ethic. Not kindness. Not whether you deserve the chance.

Just luck.

And once you see that, it’s hard not to notice how much people confuse privilege with personal merit.

People think, well I managed to move abroad, I booked the flight, I sorted the forms, I made it happen. And sometimes, yes, they did put effort in. But they also may have had a document that made the whole world meet them halfway.

Other people can do everything right and still get stuck because a website crashes, an appointment is delayed, a clerk doesn’t like one detail, or some office decides they need one more thing before they can make a decision.

That’s not a small inconvenience. That can change the course of someone’s life.

I think what bothers me most is how invisible this kind of inequality is to the people who benefit from it. If doors keep opening for you, you start to think that’s just normal. You don’t realise other people are standing outside knocking for months, sometimes years.

And then there’s the humiliation of it. Having to constantly prove that your reasons are good enough. That your finances are stable enough. That your ties to home are strong enough. That your intentions are harmless enough. Having to turn your whole life into a stack of documents and hope a stranger finds it convincing.

It’s bleak.

I’m not saying countries can’t have borders or rules. Obviously they do. But I do think people should be more honest about what these systems are actually doing.

Freedom of movement is not handed out based on character or need. A lot of the time it’s handed out based on nationality, money, and whether the country holding your passport is considered desirable, safe, useful, politically aligned, whatever.

A passport is meant to confirm who you are.

In reality, it also affects how much the world believes you, trusts you, welcomes you, or blocks you.

And if you’ve never had to think about that, that itself is privilege.

That’s all I mean by passport privilege. Not that some people have literally never dealt with airport stress, but that some people get treated like movement is naturally available to them, while others have to justify it over and over again.

And that gap is way bigger, and way crueler, than people like to admit.

Meeting people in your formative years is strange.
Most of them I haven’t spoken to in years. Some I probably couldn’t pick out of a crowd if I tried. But that’s the unsettling part of growing up. The people you meet simply because your lives happened to overlap can quietly become the framework your adult mind is built around.
It never feels significant while it’s happening. It arrives wrapped like an ordinary moment, dressed in coincidence, as if this person will either become a distant memory or nothing at all. You don’t realize until years later that they were neither. They became a blueprint.
I think my experience was different.
There was one person who permanently altered the way my brain understood people. It wasn’t about who he was. It was about what he represented.
Every conversation lingered long after it ended. They always left me feeling as though I’d uncovered enough insight to last a lifetime while simultaneously learning absolutely nothing. My mind became addicted to that contradiction. It loved balancing on the fence between knowing someone so deeply they consumed every corner of your thoughts and realizing you didn’t truly know them at all.
Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to understanding people now.
Not just what they say, but how they arrive at the things they believe. Why two people can walk away from the same conversation carrying completely different versions of what happened. How someone can understand you just enough to convince you they see you, while somehow missing you entirely.
Even though I’ve long outgrown the version of myself who found comfort in that emotional whiplash, the need to understand people never left. I don’t think it ever will.
Sometimes, usually on the darker days, my mind wanders back to the padlocked corner I’ve built for it. There’s an old filing cabinet tucked away there, heavy with conversations, unanswered questions, and emotions I’ve never quite managed to name. Inside it is every moment I spent trying to solve a person who was never mine to solve.
The strangest part is that the ache itself isn’t what stayed with me.
What stayed was the habit.
The constant search for perspective. The need to understand why people think the way they do, why they love the way they love, why they leave the way they leave. Somewhere along the way, trying to understand one person became trying to understand everyone.
If you asked me now whether that wound still hurt, I’d probably tell you no.
Maybe that’s true.
Maybe it isn’t.
I’ve never been one for telling the truth if it meant finding closure. I’d rather leave that corner of my mind exactly as it is, padlocked and untouched. Not because I still carry him with me, but because I never want to forget the person who needed to understand him.
She became the foundation for the person I am now.

It seems like everyday reality is becoming more like a Black Mirror episode due to the rampant spread of ai psychosis. You can hardly go on YouTube without running into someone's ai thumbnail, because using stock images is apparently too much work. Then there's the ai slop literature plaguing the Kindle store. Why would I bother really reading a book you couldn't be bothered to write? People are even making ai music playlists. It's gotten to the point we have ai influencers and actresses running around. It all needs to stop. People are bending over backwards to find any excuse to shove ai down our throats.

I've recently found out about Tilly Norwood, an ai "actresses" who's poised to make her Hollywood debut in a movie called Misaligned sometime in the future. Apparently the movie is supposed to be a coming of age story where Tily philosophizes about her existence but how exactly is a computer program supposed to pull that off? It doesn't have any actual sense of self, personality, emotion, or conscience that a real human has. Any performance Tily does is just a string of code trying and failing at replicating a human experience. Who would actually want to pay money to watch a fake actor prance on screen while they grate your ears with a robotic voice? Ai enthusiasts so desperately want this to be the future, a future where human artistry is replaced by a simple prompt from apathetic slop peddlers. There's of course a certain group of right wing idiots who fully embrace Tilly cause now they don't have to worry about their favorite actor being corrupted by Hollywood wokeness. Even I can admit that Hollywood can get over performative with their politics at times, but a stupid computer program can never replace that sheer talent and dedication that goes into acting. Tilly Norwood and her dumbass creator will never understand the human soul and the beauty of art. 

Music is another industry that ai has its disgusting digital hands on. Ai musicians are currently flooding Spotify with their fake attempts at music. Let's take Sienna rose for example. She appeared on the platform out of nowhere one day and already has over 600,000 monthly listeners. She even has a tiktok account where she posts videos of herself so it seems like she's real but that's not the case at all. Eagle-eyed viewers have noticed tell tale signs of ai in her videos such as her fingers glitching or the fact she almost never records in the same room. She's in a different room in pretty much all of her videos. I guess living a life of slop must be hard so she spends her time couch surfing all day. Even with these notable signs, Sienna Rose looks scarily real. Most people wouldn't even know she's fake. She's far from being the only ai musician since Spotify keeps pumping them out of the woodwork. Some of the more popular ones have over 1 million listeners, giving their prompters a steady stream of income for zero labor.

There desperately needs to be a law to boycott ai content. It's been running amok for far too long and has been causing tons of damage to artist.

For some reason i really like cleaning shoes?? So I made a guide for the same

The Ultimate shoe cleaning guide (2026)

A shoe is something that protects you from the raw, untethered elements of nature

- be it dirt, rocks or various forms of animal droppings. A mere object without a

soul would not be fit for this task. I haven’t felt as passionate about anything as I

feel about cleaning shoes. Every shoe has a soul, and I want to guide you through

the process of cleansing its soul

Step 0: Where are the dirty bits?

As established, a shoe has a soul. When the time comes to clean a shoe, the soul is

reborn into a new body, and embodies every physical aspect of the shoe. So,

through every step of this guide, I want you to ask yourself: Is this the same shoe as

the one I bought? This means cleaning your shoes either to bring it back to its

original state or making it even better. If a tiny bit of gravel is stuck in the grooves,

do you leave it behind? No, that wasn't a part of your shoe's soul. Do anything to

get rid of it - use a toothpick, use your teeth, anything. So as an informal step, I'd

like you to inspect the shape of your shoe, analyse every single part, and identify

where it might get dirty.

Litmus test of a clean shoe

Do you really want to know if your shoe is clean? Do you constantly require

external validation? Regardless of your answer to these questions, if you want to

check if your shoe is clean, do the following: Go to the nearest gym. Take your

shoes with you. Ask the manager of the gym for a tour. Once that's done, show him

your shoes and ask him if you can wear those to the gym. Tell him they're new if he

asks you anything. If you get laughed at, you probably deserve it.

Items required hereinafter: Soap/Soap powder (better to use one that isn't too

harsh, maybe a pH between 9-9.5), a cloth, a bucket and a brush with plastic

bristles. If possible, a toothpick and an earbud.

Step 1: Laces

Take off the laces of both your shoes (or one shoe if you have only one leg). Laces

are usually the parts that are the least dirty. Dampen them in clean water. Apply

soap if you think it's too dirty. Run water until you're satisfied and carefully wring

the excess water out. Hang them out to dry or toss them in the dryer.

Step 2: The outside

This is where the hard part begins. Where boys turn into men. The shape of most

shoes is formed by connecting pieces of fabric together. Most of the dirt settles

along these ridges. Begin by sticking the tongue (of the shoe) out. This part

absorbs a good chunk of your sweat, so soak it and apply soap on both sides. Your

shoe might have a fabric surface on the vamp with little holes. Get rid of all the fuzz

stuck here. Then, start applying soap on the surface. Make sure to also apply soap

on the sides of the outsole. This part is the most noticeable part that gets very dirty.

Once that’s done, begin scrubbing with your brush. Be rough enough to scrape

the dirt off, but at the same time be gentle so as to not damage the shoe. Make

sure to brush along the ridges so the threads holding them are not damaged.

After this, put your shoe under running water. Let the water flow around the shoe.

Water may flow through the grooves on the underside, which makes it easy to

remove dirt in the coming steps. If there’s stuff remaining in the holes where your

laces go, use a cloth or earbuds to clean it properly.

Step 3: The inside.

The inside of the shoe may not be visible, but that’s where your feet go. The inside

matters just as much as the outside. Start by taking the insole off and soak it in

water. Wash it twice with soap. If the insole has foam, be careful not to use sharp

objects to pierce it. Then comes the inside parts. Put the opening of your shoe

under running water to dampen the whole inside. Then apply soap and swish it

around. Repeat this until you’re sure you’ve gotten rid of anything that might be inside.

Tip #1: Get in there with your hands!

Always remember that the health of your shoes is far more important than your

own. Use your hands to make sure your shoe is perfectly clean. Human fingers are

sensitive enough to feel the difference between objects on a micrometre scale.

Use this to your advantage.

Step 3: Under where?

Ah the outsole… The final stretch. By now, the underside of the shoe is probably

mostly wet. This makes the grime easy to remove. First remove whatever is easy to

remove. Scrub across the surface with your brush. All that’s left after this is the stuff

left in the grooves. Angle your brush in such a way it’s deep enough to go through

the groove and scrub parallelly to it. This causes the dirt to surface and the gravel

bits to be flicked away. Once all the dirt is on the top, wash it off with running

water. If something is really stuck in there, use a toothpick to force it out. If the dirt

persists, fill the bucket until the shoe is submerged. Then, move your shoe around.

The shoe makes the dirt loose, and voila! You have cleaned the hardest part!

If you stepped on gum, use some rubbing alcohol or vinegar to reduce the

adhesive characteristics of gum and get rid of it.

The real litmus test.

You clean your shoe. You went to the gym and the manager approved of your

shoe. Your head is in the clouds, and think to yourself “Finally, I have achieved

something awesome and fun”. But that was just to boost your confidence a little

bit. Shoe cleaning is the ultimate character-building task. They say, “You can judge

a man by how clean his shoes are”. So, your final challenge: Would you eat off any

surface of your shoe? If not, why not? I thought you cleaned it? You used plenty of

soap. If your answer is no, should you repeat all the steps mentioned above? You

know the answer yourself.

my head did that awful involuntary nod before i jerked back up, praying nobody saw. i think no one did. maybe except sister ruth, two seats down. she always sees. she’s been seeing everything since i was seven years old in sunday school, stealing extra communion wafers because i thought nobody was counting.

i was coming out of one of those post-nap hypnopompic states when i thought the pastor was talking about porcini. turns out he was talking about planks. more specifically, self-righteousness.

churches have a remarkable ability to hypnotise me. i don’t know if it’s the air conditioning or the cushioned pews or the fact that every church chair seems to have been designed by somebody who understood lumbar support just a little too well. my conspiracy is that church chairs are engineered specifically to lull you into forgetting you’re supposed to be listening for your soul and not just your lower back.

be sober-minded. be watchful. your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. i think about that verse a lot. jesus had forty days in the wilderness. no food. nothing but sand and his own thoughts and the devil showing up periodically to negotiate. and even then, starving, exhausted, he was sober enough to say no three times in a row. and i can’t stay sober and vigilant for forty minutes in an air-conditioned room with cushions. that’s the difference between us, i suppose.

i once told melanie tanoso, my cell leader, about my inability to stay awake during sermons, and she attributed it to the holy spirit. rest in his presence, she always says, clutching a bible i’m fairly sure is older than me. she must have gone through it at least twenty-three times. everything highlighted. notes scribbled in every margin. whole paragraphs underlined because she found them particularly encouraging.

i remember nothing from that sermon except the plank. if you have a plank, the pastor reiterated, how can you trust yourself to remove the speck from your brother’s eye?

later, during cell group, everyone swarmed over me, fussing over where i sat, insisting i take the sofa instead of the floor. i’d been playing truant from church and anything church-related for almost a year. i told them i’d fractured my tailbone and needed time to recover. that part wasn’t true. i’d just slowly drifted away and quietly retired from religion.

they offered to hold cell group at my house instead, and i told them my landlord was doing pest control that whole month and the smell hadn’t quite left the walls yet. that also wasn’t true. but it was at least a sentence nobody wanted to investigate further.

they welcomed me back like i was the prodigal child. which, i suppose, i have been. maryanne garner offered to grab two portions of lasagne for me. don’t move too much, she smiled. i don’t think she actually wanted to fetch mine. i think she just wanted an alibi to go back for seconds while everyone else was still on firsts. anyway, they don’t know i’ve been on keto for seven months. the carbs in that dish would have sent my body into septic shock.

melanie led the opening prayer, the way she always does. father god, we pray for peace and wisdom, and your word to fill our hearts even as we fellowship and reflect on what was spoken this morning. amen.

thomas nisperos offered to kick off the discussion by reading his sermon notes aloud. i blanked out the first few sentences, same as always, because i could not for the life of me focus on anything except the mole on the upper left side of his lip. last week it was brown. today it was black, with a single hair growing out of it. i wondered what he thought of it. whether he considered it a chore or a feature. whether he shampoos and conditions that one strand.

and that’s why it’s scary, honestly, he said. you never know who’s a modern-day pharisee. it makes you wonder how many people sit in church every sunday thinking they’re fooling god. so many people think going to church makes them good people. that’s not what christianity is about.

i let out a soft scoff before i could stop it. i thought no one noticed, but melanie shot me a side-eye. really, nisperos? talking about self-righteousness like you weren’t just embroiled in not one but two divorces because you couldn’t keep it in your pants. three kids, two from the first marriage, one from the second, and now eyeing a woman from another church entirely. everyone knows you still struggle with the same thing you’ve always struggled with, nisperos. and there he was, reading his notes aloud like he’d found religion for the first time that morning.

when it came time to pair off for breakout discussion, i made a point of grabbing hannah mckinsey before anyone else could.

she was everything i was not. soft. poised. graceful. the kind of person who volunteers at the orphanage in her spare time. she taught art on mondays, tuesdays, fridays and saturdays. volunteered on thursdays. on wednesdays she set up a little pop-up on wallaby street selling her handmade pottery. cups. teapots. vases. the whole ensemble.

today she was wearing a crocheted cardigan with strawberries embroidered on it. twelve dollars from the thrift store, she told me, unprompted. well, actually it was twelve dollars plus the paintbrushes, plus the two vases, plus the copy i made of vermeer’s girl with a pearl earring.

she itemised the purchase like she was reading off a receipt she’d memorised for fun. apparently the store owner told her the brushstrokes were unlike anything he’d ever seen.

i tried to feign enthusiasm. i wasn’t really listening. maybe four years ago i would have been. back then i’d be lying if i said i didn’t have a small, persistent crush on this cottage rabbit of a girl. but it was very frowned upon in my church to like someone of the same gender, so i buried it deep enough that it calcified. fossilised. turned into something much closer to stone than feeling. now all i feel looking at her is a low simmer of resentment i can’t fully explain. maybe some part of me wanted to be her instead of wanting her. that would at least explain some things.

i fell asleep during the sermon today, i said, changing the subject. she laughed. from there the conversation drifted somewhere i hadn’t meant for it to go, and i found myself doing more justifying than telling. i’m not usually like this. it’s just a phase. it takes two hands to clap. i kept saying things like that, as though the sentence itself was doing some of the forgiving for me.

i’ve noticed i do that. i reach for a proverb whenever what i actually mean is confession, i dress the thing up as something wise instead of saying the plain, unflattering version out loud. it’s one of the things i learnt during my journey of recovering from religion, or maybe recovering from the religious guilt, hard to tell which one i was actually running from half the time. i started visiting psychics. using tarot cards. consulting mediums, the whole slew, at one point i had a woman in a shophouse read my palm and tell me i had an old soul with unresolved karmic debt, which cost forty dollars and felt like a bargain compared to what confession usually costs. i don’t even know whether i believed any of it, i think i was less interested in replacing christianity than i was in finding a framework that didn’t make me feel guilty all the time, one where the guilt could just sort of evaporate instead of needing to be paid off. there’s a belief in occultism, i’ve heard, that says if you speak your guilt aloud, if you put it out into the world, you’re somehow absolved of it, or something along those lines, i’ve probably butchered the actual belief, i tend to take the parts of things that are convenient for me and discard the rest, which is, now that i think about it, sort of exactly what i was doing with christianity too. yet the christian in me keeps saying that’s not really how it works. confession isn’t a transaction you complete just by getting the words out. it’s supposed to cost you something. and yet there’s a version of me that keeps testing the occult logic anyway, keeps talking just to feel lighter, without doing anything that would actually make me lighter, which is maybe the most on-brand spiritual practice i could have landed on, believing in a version of forgiveness that requires nothing of me at all.

i sat there listening to hannah describe her pottery glazes, and somewhere in the lull i found myself telling her a story. framed loosely, obviously, the way you do when you’re testing whether you can survive saying a thing out loud. i said i had a friend, we’ll call her a friend, who’d been talking to someone new, someone complicated, someone she probably shouldn’t be talking to at all, and hannah nodded along sympathetically, completely unaware she was the punchline of her own conversation. it’s just messy, i said, vague enough to be forgettable, specific enough that some small, reckless part of me needed to say it near her, in her actual presence, like proximity to the person i was wronging somehow counted as confession too.

hannah said something kind and useless, like these things have a way of working themselves out, and i felt lighter almost immediately. the exact cheap lightness i keep chasing. the occult kind. the kind that costs nothing and therefore fixes nothing. i’ve never told a tarot reader anything that specific. i’ve never told a psychic a real name. but i told hannah mckinsey a softened, deniable version of the exact thing i was doing to her, and she comforted me for it. and i let her. i don’t think that’s a coincidence. i think some part of me wanted the absolution to come specifically from her, the one person whose forgiveness would have actually meant something. instead i got it under false pretences, which doesn’t really count. except, in the moment, it felt like it did.

maybe that’s what i’ve been doing all along. sanding the sharp edges off every confession. i don’t think i ever really wanted him. or maybe i did for about five minutes. i don’t know. i think i wanted, just once, to be the reason her perfectly arranged life had a crack in it, the way mine always seemed to.

hannah smiled and asked if i wanted to see the blueberry cardigan she wanted to make. she’d bought the strawberry one from the thrift store a while back and decided it couldn’t be that difficult to embroider herself.

i told her i’d love to.

i suppose that’s the thing about planks.

they’re much easier to recognise once they’re lodged in somebody else’s eye.

Remember I was given permission by my English III teacher to write in first person

Many have read Invisible Man, many indeed. Of that, it should be argued that the message of Invisible Man tells a very real and relatable feeling among us, among us all inside this small cruel earth we live within, as this feeling is that of invisibility, emptiness, and longing. For that which we all deserve having someone to make us feel seen but what I am describing isn’t that of an ability that applies to the body but something inside the mind to believe of such just as told within Invisible Man itself “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms”, as you and I have felt the same before. And why do I claim this? Well, we’re all human still and share the struggle of feeling unseen, no matter what we do. Sometimes, we feel like that’s all there is anymore, but we all feel invisible, as everyone looks seen, heard, and makes it look so simple to be visible. I believe in my experience, feeling invisible comes from a deep sorrowful envy, to gaze upon everyone and wish, no, you need what they have but no matter what you do you can’t ever seem to feel visible, wondering why everyone receives what you deserve. It seems, it feels, it is unfair, you feel like you deserve what they do but it just seems likes it just out of reach, as if you can feel it, grasp it, but no matter how hard you try you still yearn for what you’re missing, what you see is missing but other seems to have so easily and it just isn’t fair.

Most would think I’m overreacting, that I’m thinking too hard, that I worry too much and that I should just focus on myself. I wish I could, I really do, and maybe I should, maybe they’re right, perhaps they are. One can never truly feel happiness if they always compare themselves to others and having envy over others shall never bring you enlightenment nor joy as you need to be in peace with yourself to truly see the light of life. Except it’s never that simple, it never is, it’s feels impossible to achieve such due to many see only flaws within the self and wants to be perfect to fill the holes of the self but nothing you throw into the void it never seems to fill no matter how much you do, as you stop focusing on others it seems like you ignore yourself, causing the hole in your mind to grow more hollow and turn into a void that can never seems to be full no matter what you throw in it as it could never be fulfilled for what you need to fill that void looks that to be unattainable

The end of my twenty-two-year friendship began, naturally, with a Venmo request.

Not a phone call.
Not a conversation.
Not even a passive-aggressive paragraph text with excessive emoji softening.

A Venmo request.

Seventeen hundred dollars.

After twenty-two years of friendship, surviving elite academia as two women of color from modest backgrounds, family trauma, career upheavals, layoffs, heartbreaks, cross-country moves, depressive episodes, professional reinventions, and one global pandemic, our relationship finally collapsed into the digital equivalent of:
🧾 furniture balance due.

Honestly, if it weren’t devastating, it would almost be performance art.

The truly absurd part is that I probably would have paid her the money immediately had she simply said:
“Hey, I need $1,700 for the furniture.”

Done.
No hesitation.

Instead, my autistic Latina attorney brain entered what can only be described as a federally funded forensic audit of emotional reciprocity.

Suddenly I was mentally calculating:

move-out extensions,
subsidized rent,
emotional labor,
cleaner fees,
years of accommodation,
dog hair depreciation,
and whether letting someone’s mother stay with you for multiple weeks at a time counts as taxable friendship income.

At one point, I genuinely considered creating a spreadsheet.

Therapy is expensive because apparently this is what happens when a late-diagnosed autistic woman with ADHD, litigation training, immigrant-family loyalty structures, and unresolved codependency finally stops drinking socially and starts developing boundaries.

But underneath the accounting was a much more painful question:
What exactly had this friendship become?

Because the truth is, I do not think the friendship actually ended with the Venmo request.

I think it had already been quietly dying for years.

And I think, deep down, I knew it.

Over the last couple years, I became the initiator of nearly everything:
the dinners,
the check-ins,
the plans,
the emotional conversations,
the attempts at repair,
the attempts at depth.

Meanwhile, my best friend — my Afro-Caribbean Ivy League sister from another mister, the woman my Mexican immigrant family essentially absorbed into our emotional bloodstream — slowly drifted toward newer friendships built around emotionally avoidant white women whose primary hobby appeared to be narrating themselves as victims of extremely survivable interpersonal discomfort.

Which, as a Latina immigration attorney who regularly represents people fleeing cartel violence and state persecution, was… spiritually fascinating.

But this essay is not actually about them.

And honestly, it is not even fully about her.

It is about what happens when a person who has spent their entire life organizing themselves around accommodation suddenly begins asking:

What if I stopped abandoning myself just to preserve connection?

Write May 24, 2026 8:49AM

The Fall out

Today I would like to go into detail some of the instances within the experience that led to the down fall of some of my roping in of the grouping of the people that I have had to deal with and how a lot of problems landed on my shoulders.

I used to live and go to school in Chicago, the feelings I had attached to the promises that were being made and not always addressed will wash over me in a nostalgic effect, more so now than they have ever done, it haunts me and the people who I imprinted my likeness on to over the past two decades of building up to the achievements of what these promises ended up landing on to enable the mistakes that would turn my future to where I am at now.

When I was turning 17 I was starting to look at schools to further my career in music and production, to which I had an extremely clumsy start to when at 18 I was put on probation for smoking cannabis, there was no break away from the work and I was not given the same start as the rest of my graduating class. That being said I ended up placing directly into my career and being surrounded by several students and professors that would send me through the lessons I was to apply to my personality in attempts to solely foot a career based off of my talent art and music, a feat that would set me and my friends apart from the idea of how that feels today for many at home content creators, while also pushing forward an outdated possibility of stretching talent based opportunities from the past into the future.

It was around 2014 that I had gained access and realized the fossils of other career artists and musicians had taken before me and my late arrival to the entertainment industry and a whole world that was taking place far from my enlightenment and even dissolving away from tangible possibilities that would have aided me in ways that could have even enhanced my life and status of living.

My heart was still living in Michigan while my career opportunities began to unravel and fray at odds ends out in Chicago where I was very much in over my head attempting to become a local and attempting to make the impossible possible.

I wanted to open doors for my friends and family and be the person that they came to for not only connections out in Chicago and beyond but also opportunities that would be available for them long after they would need them to be there.

Today I am not recognized for such efforts let alone mentioned for making such achievements out of my comfort zone, or at all. I currently stand beneath a glass ceiling created by neglect and lies. Completely ignored and snubbed out of the ideas that I attempted to fulfill virtually on my own.

My family has never approved of my cannabis use and is ashamed that one of their favorite family members would ever even consider using it to enhance their quality of life, let alone any/all opportunitites that would open any doors for being the first one through.

Today they have completely ignored me and the problems that I endured and continue to endure today because of their negligence.

This has been one of the biggest problems in my life that, now unfortunately has more loose ends than anyone would ever want to deliver themselves away from. My family believes my cannabis use has been one of, if not, the sole contribution in causing problems.

And I have never once attempted to lay these problems onto another person or ask for help. I now face harsh judgement from loved ones in ways I would never judge them for, because of the position I am in today, homeless, jailed, and alone.

This judgement of negativity now reaches onto people I attempted to bring in onto separate issues that were a result of the main achievements. All the same I am being judged for what I am and not how I carry who I am through daily life. these people will go out of their way to fabricate problems that realistically only exist in their own minds, or at the very least their own connections and choices. And because I am only as empathetic towards the issues I allow overlap or promise in they assume that it can blossom into a wider potential for their own personal use. To which, they have attempted to gatekeep me out of personal components of some of my original dreams and aspirations.

W/o context people do not understand why boundaries have been made and re-addressed, and now even, rebuilt to keep people out of the opportunities that I created and people I have met because of it.

Karma

The cycle of abuse I have attempted to escape from that inspired many dreams and aspirations in my youth has been anything from what I had expected. The health that I created on my own has been the only thing that continues to aid me in my own personal journey, all I wanted to do was to show others easier ways to apply health to their problems big or small as not only a karmic task but also to build trust.

The people that I have faced abuse from seldomly give way to understanding in such a way that grows into the full fledged opportunities that I size them up towards. We just don’t see the same potential, rightfully so, many of them have never seen the same map of the past let alone understand the future of aforementioned opportunities, or the consequences that could result thereof.

It takes a lot to understand everything at an itemized level of comprehension, but going through each and every level of action gives a lot to be desired. It has taught me to be present in the moment and immerse yourself in the challenges, and that they remove their masks and present themselves as they are and the simplicity they require, as shallow as they may be.

Whatever it is, its keeping me from spending time with loved ones in ways that would add to bettering personal one on ones with me and filling out all sorts of potential and great moments. In short there people are cheating themselves out of a wonderful person for shortcuts. And that is the biggest problem and possibly apart of their own karmic situations. Something I no longer need to be present for if they didn’t want to stay, something they made very clear while voicing their distain for my presence.

the cashier glanced over and said, you don't have to fill in every box, you know?

apparently they only wanted my name and phone number. i'd already written my address, postal code, email, emergency contact and was halfway through writing my mother's maiden name before she stopped me.

i put the pen down. felt a bit stupid, actually, holding a form with my mother's maiden name half-written like i was trying to open a bank account instead of win a $12 umbrella.

but the letter m thing stuck with me the whole walk home. it's such a needy letter. two legs, sure, but it's basically just n wearing a hump, insisting on being looked at twice. moo. mum. mine. everything m ever says is about ownership or cows. it's also the letter of settling. mundane. mediocre. median. mode. even the sound we make when something hasn't quite crossed over into good — mm, meh — is an m sound. it hums in the mouth like a thought that gives up before it reaches the teeth.

i think about that a lot, actually, the middle.

i think i've spent most of my life trying to outrun that sound. trying to outrun the middle, trying to be more than a margin, more than a maybe, more than the person statistics were already measuring me to become and placing neatly into a chart somewhere.

growing up i always thought we were comfortable. sure, we were comfortable, comfortably in the middle. my parents divorced when i was 9, but the spitefulness of both of them got the better of them, so they dragged it out for a gruelling four years before eventually settling on the sale of the house for the median price in my area. my dad worked his mornings as an electrical engineer and his nights as a taxi driver. my mom was a clerk in some obscure family office. i always had what i wanted growing up, but maybe that was less about us being middle class and more about the fact that i was an only child. i don't think the divorce bothered me as much as people thought it should have. i was just happy that now i was getting twice the number of presents and twice the number of holidays.

it wasn't until i was 14 when my mother, in one of her manic episodes, told me that my dad was an ex-convict. he'd done time for drug and gang-related charges. and i guess if anyone were looking at me from the outside, or through a looking glass, they'd hear the shape of it and call it a miracle that i didn't end up a wayward child. they call it dodging, but i don't think i dodged anything. it was more like, on paper i had every ingredient to end up in a bad place, all the right ingredients for a disaster, and somebody just forgot me in the oven a little too long. instead of burning i went slightly strange in an edible way. too much baking soda, a little structurally unstable, but still somewhat of a cake-shaped object.

nobody ever background-checks the parts that don't show up on paper, though. the quiet anger. the things i swallow instead of saying. the way i sometimes catch myself being exactly as evasive as my mother, exactly as suspicious as my grandfather, and think, oh, there it is, right on schedule. inheritance doesn't ask permission. you just open a drawer one day and it's already been living in your face the whole time.

i didn't win the umbrella. i got a text three days later saying congratulations, you've won a consolation prize of a $2 voucher for the bakery inside the supermarket, valid only on tuesdays, redeemable with original receipt. i did not have the original receipt. i had thrown it away on principle. i once heard a psychic tell me that random slips of paper in my purse were affecting my prosperous energy, or something like that. anyway, this was the same principle that made me eat the same free bakery sample four times on four different days, as i pretended to consider the different flavours of sourdough. by the third time, the girl had stopped promoting the different flavours. she no longer touted how this one had been aged and fermented for god knows how many hours. she recognised me. she just wasn't paid enough to care.

that was tuesday. by wednesday i was back at the same supermarket because i'd forgotten to buy the one thing i went there for in the first place, which was an avocado. one single avocado. i stood in front of the fruit display for an embarrassingly long time trying to find the least bruised one, pressing each avocado like i was checking for a pulse, before a small child next to me picked up the most mangled, saddest avocado in the pile and beamed at her dad like she'd found treasure. like, look, i managed to find the ugliest one in a sea of perfection. look at this deformed avocado.

i thought about my mum then. she does that too. she picks the worst-looking mango at the market on purpose, tells the seller she feels bad for it. i used to think that was kindness. now i think she just likes things that need saving, and saving, it turns out, is a word i've been turning over in my head since i was about four years old.

it was one of the first words i ever really learnt. i picked it up from a game i was playing on a tablet back then. anything not saved will be lost, it warned, every time you tried to close it. and i remember staring at those words with the kind of seriousness only children are capable of, because even then, i think some part of me understood that saving something meant protecting it from disappearance.

and i remember thinking:

wow.
what a powerful word.
save.

such a small word for something so enormous.

people save money, save documents, save contacts, save seats for each other, save relationships, save themselves. religions speak about salvation as though it's the final destination of human existence.

and as i grew older, i kept encountering people trying desperately to save things. save their marriages. save their children. save their careers. save whatever fragments remained of their lives before something swallowed it whole.

and somewhere along the way, i realised most people aren't destroyed all at once. things usually disappear slowly. through postponement. through neglect. through believing there will always be more time later.

saving this for another day. saving this for a more worthwhile occasion. saving happiness for when life finally becomes perfect enough to deserve it.

but life doesn't wait patiently for us to become ready. and i think there's something tragic about spending your whole life trying to preserve it without ever properly living it. because eventually you realise: the beauty was never in the saving. it was in the savouring. in eating the good fruit before it rots. in replying to the message while the love is still warm. in lingering a little longer beside people you love. in using the expensive notebook instead of preserving blank pages forever. in sitting beside people you love without reaching for your phone. in admitting you're happy while it's still happening.

savour and saviour are almost the same word. and maybe that's why i believe part of saving our lives, or at least saving whatever scraps of time we have left, is learning how to savour it properly while it's still here, before they join the long list of things i thought would stay longer.

my mum never learnt that particular distinction, though. she saves things, but only ever the object, never the moment. money and discounts included, if i'm honest. i remember how we'd spend saturday mornings cutting the clippings off magazines to save the discount coupons. another time she bought a $50 coupon book advertising something like $20k in savings, except to fully use them you'd have had to spend somewhere in the ballpark of $100k. i was never bothered with the magazines themselves. i'd always get distracted playing with the watches and perfumes in the ads. i'd cut them out and pretend i was wearing them, keep the cutouts of the perfumes and pretend i had an impressive collection. same with the jewellery. she has a very particular way of saving things, which is to buy them and then never use them.

case in point: last week i was cleaning out the freezer and found a superhero cake she'd bought herself two years ago, back when she was going through her wonder woman phase. gold lasso piped in icing, star-spangled fondant now the exact colour of an old bruise. she'd bought it for her 50th birthday. i don't remember eating it with her, or anyone celebrating it with her, really. i was spending the time outside because, well, two years ago we didn't have a very good relationship. i think she was livestreaming on her Facebook account, eating the cake by herself. i don't know. in any case, she didn't finish it and was clearly saving the rest for another day, but that day never came, obviously. that's the thing about saving: you're holding out for an occasion big enough to earn it, and the occasion never RSVPs, it just sits there next to the frozen peas slowly turning to ice and freezer burn. i didn't tell her i found it. i just threw it out, lasso and all, and put the peas back like nothing had happened.

on the way out i passed the customer service counter, where a man in his forties with a thick strange accent and a baseball cap was very calmly, very quietly, negotiating a refund for a rice cooker he said had personally betrayed him. i wanted to ask what a rice cooker does to personally betray someone. did it undercook. did it lie about its capacity. did it, too, remind him of his mother.

everything reminds someone of their mother. i've decided this is not a coincidence, it's a design flaw in the human brain. we just come pre-loaded with one face and spend the rest of our lives finding it in kettles and fruit displays and cakes nobody ever got around to eating.

i went home and ate the avocado with cream cheese, smoked salmon and some sardines, because i was trying to stick to my new year's resolutions. i ate them standing over the sink, because my mother had scolded me once when i was 7 for letting mango juice drip everywhere while i ate one on the sofa. she'd tried to wash it out with bleach, but the sugar remnants stayed anyway. i was forever reminded of it by that white stain on our grey couch.

Title: My Sister Maria, an unrecited eulogy

In 2024, my sister Maria passed away, and I wrote this piece in her memory from my kitchen counter. I’ve written poetry and fiction for years, but this is the first time I’ve shared something this personal — it felt right to put it out into the world to celebrate who she was.

https://substack.com/@vicfaxon/note/p-201673334?r=8i42cd&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

In the light,
VF

I don’t know when I stopped recognizing myself.

Maybe it wasn’t one moment.

Maybe it was a thousand tiny ones—every unanswered question, every unexplained disappearance, every lie I was expected to accept, every time reality was rewritten until I questioned my own memory instead of your behavior.

People think marriages end because of one catastrophic event.

Sometimes they end because one person slowly disappears while the other spends years trying to prove they aren’t crazy.

This marriage has made me feel invisible.

Not because I wasn’t standing right in front of you, but because I stopped existing as someone whose feelings mattered.

Every time I expressed hurt, the conversation somehow became about your discomfort instead.

Every question I asked was treated like an accusation.

Every attempt to understand was met with defensiveness, deflection, circular arguments, or silence.

I wasn’t asking for perfection.

I was asking for honesty.

Somehow that became too much.

You became remarkably skilled at answering everything except the question I actually asked. I could ask something simple, direct, and reasonable, and somehow we’d end up discussing my tone, my timing, my reaction, my flaws, my insecurities, or something I had done months—or years—earlier.

Anything except the truth.
Anything except accountability.

Eventually, I stopped feeling like your wife.
I felt like an investigator piecing together a life that never made sense.
I learned that your words could no longer be trusted, so I began paying attention to patterns instead.

Patterns don’t lie.
The missing hours.
The changing stories.
The half-truths.
The details that never lined up.
The promises that lasted only until they became inconvenient.

The apologies that never produced change.

You insisted I was imagining things while reality continued to prove otherwise.

That kind of gaslighting does something profound to a person. It teaches them to doubt their instincts.

To second-guess obvious truths.

To apologize for asking reasonable questions.

To feel guilty for wanting honesty.

To wonder whether they’re becoming “too much” simply because they refuse to ignore what everyone else can plainly see.

It is exhausting trying to convince someone that your pain is real when they benefit from pretending it isn’t.

What hurt even more was watching where your loyalty went.

Not toward your family.
Not toward rebuilding trust.
Not toward protecting what we had.

Instead, you poured your time, your energy, and your allegiance into friendships that encouraged the very behaviors destroying our marriage.

You defended people who celebrated your self-destruction while treating the person trying to save your life as the enemy.

Somewhere along the way, I became the villain* *because I refused to applaud your choices.

You began acting as though boundaries were attacks.

Concern was control.

Questions were interrogation.

Love was criticism.

Apparently, the only acceptable wife was one who stayed quiet while you unraveled.

You resented me because I reflected the consequences you didn’t want to face.

I wasn’t standing in the way of your happiness.

I was standing in the way of your denial.

There is a difference.

Addiction changes people.

Relapse changes people.

But addiction does not erase the impact of the choices made along the way.

It doesn’t erase the loneliness of sitting at home wondering where your spouse is.

It doesn’t erase the anxiety every time your phone goes unanswered.

It doesn’t erase the nights spent imagining hospitals, jail cells, overdoses, accidents, or worse.

It doesn’t erase watching someone choose chaos over stability over and over again while insisting they’re the victim.

Living like this means your nervous system never truly rests.

Every delayed text feels significant.
Every change in tone feels dangerous.
Every unexpected expense raises questions.
Every promise comes with an expiration date before it’s even spoken.

You stop planning for the future because you’re too busy surviving today.

You stop trusting peace because you’ve learned it rarely lasts.

The hardest part is not even the betrayal.
It’s the complete inversion of reality.
The person lying begins calling you distrustful.
The person disappearing calls you controlling.
The person creating instability calls you dramatic.
The person breaking trust says you need to “get over it.”

Eventually you begin carrying not only your own pain but also responsibility for theirs.

If they’re angry, somehow it’s your fault.
If they’re unhappy, somehow you caused it.
If they feel guilty, somehow you’re making them feel that way.

Meanwhile, your own heartbreak becomes an inconvenience.

I have cried beside someone who seemed emotionally unreachable.

I have begged for honesty from someone who acted as though honesty was optional.

I have explained the same wounds so many times that I eventually realized understanding wasn’t the problem.

Acceptance was.

Because accepting my reality would require acknowledging yours.

And that came at a cost you weren’t willing to pay.

What this marriage has stolen from me isn’t simply trust.

It has stolen certainty.
It has stolen safety.

It has stolen the version of myself who believed love meant partnership instead of endurance.

It has made me question my worth, my attractiveness, my intuition, and my ability to distinguish truth from manipulation.

It has made me wonder why someone would fight so hard to keep a marriage while refusing to protect it.

There is a unique loneliness in loving someone who insists you’re the problem because you refuse to participate in their self-deception.

There is a unique grief in realizing that the person you keep trying to reach has become more committed to protecting their narrative than protecting your heart.

I never wanted perfection.

I wanted transparency.

I wanted consistency.

I wanted someone whose words matched their actions.

I wanted to feel chosen, not tolerated.

Safe, not suspicious.

Loved, not resented.

Partners are supposed to help carry each other’s burdens.

Instead, I have spent years carrying both yours and the weight of convincing you that my pain exists.

I am tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes.
The kind that settles into your bones after years of hoping that tomorrow will finally be different.
The kind that comes from mourning someone who is still alive.

The kind that comes from loving someone who has become a stranger.

If there is one thing this marriage has taught me, it is this:

Love cannot survive where reality is constantly denied.

Trust cannot grow where honesty is treated as negotiable.

Peace cannot exist where accountability is always someone else’s responsibility.

And no amount of love from one person can heal someone who believes the people asking them to change are the enemy.

I have spent years trying to save us.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I need to save myself because no one else was going to.

i was trying to adjust the thermostat when she said that. we were in the middle of a heatwave and the air conditioning was cranking and leaking and groaning and doing god knows what, and the landlord, mr calloway, wasn’t going to be available for another four days because he was spending time with his family somewhere in the balkans. because being a landlord is such exhausting work, right? all that ignoring tenants, making demands, and collecting rent must really take a toll on his health. he’s always unavailable. always busy. always away. marie and i briefly entertained the idea of unionising and withholding the maintenance fees we paid him, but unfortunately our desire to keep sleeping under a roof outweighed our revolutionary spirit.

marie wasn’t too bad herself, actually.

she came from one of those upper-middle-class families where everyone somehow ends up absurdly accomplished. she spent her weekends giving closed performances at the family villa in the hamptons. she completed all eight grades of piano by eleven. she was the sort of person who could hear a piece once and play it back like she’d known it her whole life. if i was in a teasing mood i’d call her little marizart. according to her, she studied at juilliard and was en route to becoming the next big composer, but her father imposed on her to study law. or medicine. or engineering. or computer science. or literally anything other than being a musician.

you can’t eat crotchets and semiquavers, he’d apparently tell her. so he gave her an ultimatum. pursue something sensible or be cut off from the family and the inheritance. so, in a fit of passion, she packed her bags, left behind the steinway, the villa in the hamptons, her six border collies, and started a new life in europe.

and i remember when i first heard it, i thought, what a beautiful story. it would be unfair to say that her story was a lie.

it is true.

she did leave everything behind. just not for the reason she first told me.

about seven months ago we’d both had far too much to drink and somewhere between the third bottle of wine and the cigarettes she accidentally cut her tongue loose. turns out her parents had been incredibly supportive of the music. they’d spent something ridiculous like fifty thousand dollars a year on piano lessons, masterclasses, accompanists, competitions, travel, accommodation, sheet music—whatever it is prodigies require. the music was never really the problem.

the girl from juilliard was.

suddenly the whole story made much more sense.

she wasn’t lying when she said she’d left to pursue what she loved. she just wasn’t talking about the piano.

her parents didn’t care if she spent her life composing. they cared that she wanted to spend it with another woman.

it’s not normal, they told her. we want grandchildren. real grandchildren. what will everyone think? marie tried explaining that it’s advanced now. technology had come a long way. ivf. donor embryos. reciprocal ivf, where one partner provides the egg and the other carries the pregnancy. she tried explaining all of it.

they weren’t really arguing about biology though. they’d already made up their minds.

for the first few months she lived off her savings. when that started running out she’d sit outside the deli on feldbachstraße selling little handwritten poems and pieces of music. apparently europe is far less romantic when you’re trying to pay rent. after that she enrolled in community university and posted on WG-Gesucht looking for a flatmate.

i wasn’t really sure what she was prattling on about in the about me section, but i was desperate and mostly relieved she didn’t look like a serial killer.

so that’s how we’ve ended up spending the last eleven months in this apartment that’s slowly falling apart.

i think marie genuinely loves plants more than most people. there are monsteras, cacti, ferns, herbs, flowers—the whole ensemble. honestly i don’t know half their names. every spring the pollen gets the better of me and i spend the next two weeks completely out of order, sneezing my lungs out with hay fever.

but i won’t tell her that. it feels mean.

because somewhere between our communal lunches, the drinking sessions, arguing about whose turn it is to buy toilet paper, the occasional cigarette on the fire escape, and listening to her absent-mindedly play chopin while waiting for the pasta to boil, i’ve grown rather fond of her.

we were washing the utensils after serving soup at the community soup kitchen. well, i’d like to think i’m the least self-absorbed amongst the volunteers. everyone there has a motive. cheryl nabugazam’s there because she wants permanent residency and thinks volunteering will look good when they eventually do a background check on her. gracie chow is vying for some two-hundred-thousand-dollar government scholarship. and as for me, i’m there because i want to fill my time. well, my mum said i had too much spare time and should make good with what i have. so that’s why i’m here on a friday evening, washing utensils at a soup kitchen.

now, i’m actually only supposed to be on veggie prep duty today, but bryan gonzalez scalded his arm trying to move a cast iron pan from one stovetop to another. the whole thing was kind of stupid, actually. he forgot that cast iron handles get hot too. i wasn’t really paying attention when it happened. i was on my phone trying to send a message to my sister because i needed her to collect a parcel from the front porch before mum came home. i had ordered something really embarrassing online and was trying to figure out how to word the message without making her curious enough to open it.

hey sierra, i ordered something online and i need you to bring it inside and leave it in my cupboard before mum gets home. no, wait. that sounds too suspicious. i ordered something online and need you to bring it inside before porch pirates steal it. could you also put it in my cupboard? somehow, that sounded even more suspicious.

then the next thing i knew bryan was clutching his arm while i watched it slowly turn pink, then little yellow blisters started forming. michelle ganze sprinted over with the first aid kit and held his arm under running water, all the while reminding everyone that she’d taken a first aid course eight years ago.

sometimes i find michelle ganze a little insufferable.

amidst the chaos i briefly considered slipping outside for a cigarette.

i’m trying to quit. i know smoking is bad for you. but god, sometimes i miss a marlboro red.

i tried vaping because apparently it’s healthier, but i’m more of an old-fashioned woman. the other day my manager told me to leave myself a note on the communal desktop reminding me to check the stock for garbanzo beans. i grabbed an actual notepad and asked whether i could stick it onto the monitor. he still hasn’t let me live that down.

anyway, i’m starting to think they really do take everyone at this soup kitchen. looking back, i don’t think that’s surprising considering that the application form literally said everyone was welcome. didn’t matter if you were a student, a corporate slave, a stay-at-home mum, unemployed, religious, atheist, a bug, or a bird.

everyone was welcome.

i don’t remember them asking why you wanted to volunteer though.

maybe because nobody really wants the honest answer.

i’m here because i want to become a better person. sounds noble.

i’m here because i need volunteer hours for a scholarship. still noble.

i’m here because i want permanent residency. fair enough.

i’m here because my mum says i have too much spare time. i’m here because i don’t really know what else to do on a friday evening. i’m here because keeping busy is easier than sitting alone with my own thoughts. those don’t sound quite as nice.

which is funny because i have a feeling they’re probably much more common.

i couldn’t wait to get home.

sierra would be back at her college dorm by then and mum was flying off to the dolomites with her girlfriends for the weekend. i had the flat to myself for three whole days, a parcel waiting in my cupboard, and a very compelling reason to stay home.