AN ACTUAL PIECE OF MY MIND

First things first, you are going to read this (especially if you are my loved one) and want to scold me and reprimand me. You are going to tell that this is me feeding the negativity and declaring a terrible reality upon myself. But, I promise you, that is not what I am trying to do. Please try to understand, utloisisa hanyane feela. This is me trying to express whatever it is that is going on in my mind, truths I am too afraid of slapping directly into your face. I just need to be heard, to be listened to, even if it’s just for a fleeting while and sometimes what I need to voice isn’t always pleasant. My thoughts are not always lovely and kind and sweet. You might also tell me that somethings are better kept to oneself, but I have been doing that my whole life and I feel like I am about to explode. I have a very strong urge to say, “I’m okay” and reassure you, but I am truly not. So much has been wrong, and as much this post is the plainest honesty, not wrapped around in metaphors, I have ever shared, it is just a little hint, I’m afraid.

I am not feeling particularly bold as I type this, or brave. I am afraid. I am dreary. However, I am also in need. I do not know what I need, but this is a plea. This is me, typing away past midnight, begging for something I cannot voice because it something I do not know.

This is not a rebellion. It’s just me, the me that even I don’t like.

It’s not a cry for help also. Tomorrow, I will wake up, go on about my day carrying the same rotten feelings. Do not pity me, for I do not want for the truest act I have ever done in a long time to be pitied, I want it to be remembered rather.

I am sorry, truly. Now start:

Before I begin, allow me to make one thing clear. I do not wish to die. Not even in my most crushed of state is death ever a thing I truly desire. Yes, I do not wish to partake in life and at times, I would like to erase myself from existence. I have found myself feeling very out-of-touch with the experience of life as it presented to me quite often. I fail to understand it and thus I fail to sustain the desire to be present in it.

It’s not sadness, not always. It’s not despair in the way people expect. It’s a kind of a slow mental drifting, like trying to hold water in your hands. The more I try to grasp life, the more it slips away. I look around and everyone seems to have bought into a system I can’t make sense of. You’re born, you’re told what to chase, who to be, what to value, but no one really tells you why. And the answers that are offered never seem to sit quite right with me.

People say, “this is just how life is.” But why? Why this version of life? Why these rules, this structure, this endless striving? What is the point of fighting for a place in a world that doesn’t explain itself? How am I supposed to want something I don’t understand?

It’s not that I want to die. It’s that I don’t see a reason to fight for a life I feel so estranged from. My body breathes, my heart beats, but my spirit stands on the edge, unsure whether to lean in or step back. I keep waiting for some grand revelation, or even a small sign – anything to tell me that being here is more than just surviving days I didn’t ask for.

I believe in God. Deeply. I believe in the principle that His will is never in vain. But I can’t help wondering – what if we’ve misinterpreted Him, just as we’ve misinterpreted so much else? What if everything we’ve come to know about life is based on borrowed truths, half-seen shadows, or well-meaning lies? What if the truth is nothing like what we’ve imagined? What if this is all a dream? Or a poorly translated reality? I find myself caught between wanting to live for the people I love, or what I think is love, and questioning whether these feelings are even truly mine. Sometimes I wonder if love, affection, care, sadness, anger… are just echoes of conditioning, neurons firing according to some ancient map I never chose to follow. Do I even have a brain? A self? Or am I just a character in a script I never got to read?

My mind is torn. Torn between continuing to participate in what often feels like a charade, for the people I love, or whatever this thing called love truly is. Because sometimes I wonder: are these feelings even mine or just something my brain has been taught to know, taught to perform? Do I even have a brain? A self? Or am I just a pattern of thoughts in a system I didn’t design?

I sleep a lot lately. Not because it helps. Not because it soothes me. My dreams are often painfully vivid, heavy with symbols and emotions I cannot decode. My mind does not rest, even when my eyes are closed. I sleep, not always from tiredness, but perhaps from resignation. From not knowing what else to do. I’m tired, yes, but there’s a kind of tired that’s deeper than the body. A tired that seeps into your questions, your faith, your identity.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone else feels this way and just never says it out loud. If everyone’s carrying their own version of this quiet confusion, this private ache. Maybe we’re all just pretending better than we realize. Smiling with our mouths and screaming with our minds. Or maybe I’m the only one this lost. Maybe that’s the scariest part – not knowing whether this is universal or uniquely mine.

I try to ground myself in routines. Eat, shower, study, smile, sleep, repeat. But even those start to feel like rituals without meaning, motions performed in the absence of belief. I look at my hands sometimes, and they feel like someone else’s. Like I’m a visitor in my own body, doing what I’m supposed to because I’ve been told it’s “normal.” But normal doesn’t feel good. It just feels… confusing. Safe in a way that puzzles me, yet very unsafe.

And I think about time. How it keeps moving, dragging me along even when I’m not ready. The days blur together, and I wonder if I’m really living or just being carried forward by some invisible current. Sometimes I think if I stood still long enough, maybe time would forget me. Maybe the world would pause and ask if I’m okay before pushing me onward again.

I envy people who seem certain. People who have goals and five-year plans and morning routines that mean something to them. I envy their conviction, even if I don’t believe it’s real. Maybe they’ve just made peace with the questions. Or maybe they’ve stopped asking altogether.

I keep hoping that somewhere in the chaos, I’ll stumble into something – a feeling, a person, a moment – that will make everything click. That will fill in the blanks. But it hasn’t come. Not yet. Maybe it never will. And I don’t know if I should be patient or give up searching altogether.

I think of my younger self a lot lately. The one who dreamed so loudly, who believed the world would one day make sense. I want to reach back and hold her hand. Tell her I’m trying. That I haven’t given up, even if it sometimes feels like I have. That surviving isn’t failure. That maybe being lost is a form of movement too. I also think though, of how she had questions, how she suppressed her confusion and how it was much easier for her to play. I am starting to wonder if there was ever a time in my life where I ever not felt out-of-touch with my life. From as far back as I could remember, I would wonder if my life were a dream and I am about to be woken up in my actual life and realize that I’ve had a long disturbing dream.

Sometimes I feel like no one knows me, not really. Not even myself. Who am I? What am I? What am I meant to be doing here? I exist, but I don’t quite feel myself existing. And that disconnect…that hollow ache of not-knowing, it follows me. Even in joy, even in company.

I don’t even like writing anymore. Or anything, really. I just write because I don’t have anyone to talk to in a way that makes me feel like I’d make sense, especially when I already don’t understand myself. I write because silence scratches at me, not because I enjoy this. I feel like a liar, a fraud; walking through the world wearing faces I didn’t choose. I say I’m fine. I say I’m functioning. I say I’m okay. But I hate it. I hate this pretending. I hate that I don’t even know where the pretending ends and the real me begins…if such a person even exists.

But still I wake up. Still, I move. Not out of clarity, but out of habit. Out of hope that maybe one day, the world might begin to make more sense. Maybe it’s the echo of my own questions keeping me alive. And until then, I’ll sit with this not-knowing. I’ll write through it. I’ll name it. Pray through it. Read through it. Seek clarity. I won’t pretend to understand life – but I’ll stay, at least for now, in case someday I do.

I want to believe there’s a reason I’m still here. That even in this fog, my being matters. That maybe, just maybe, feeling all this so deeply is its own kind of purpose.

Bye, for now, or forever. I don’t know. I feel really horrible.

.the girl who wished to be The Sun