The Versions of Me Don’t Take Turns
Some days my mind feels like a machine with three broken gears, all spinning in different directions, all insisting they’re the one in charge.
One gear hums too fast, too bright, too loud...
A flicked switch I never touched, a sun that rises at midnight, a pulse that outruns my body.
It tells me I can do everything at once,
so I try,
and try,
and try,
until the world blurs at the edges.
Then another gear drags like it’s rusted through.
The air thickens.
The colors dim.
Every thought feels like it’s wading through syrup.
I watch myself from somewhere far away,
like I’m a ghost haunting my own skin,
unable to step back inside.
And beneath both of those,
there’s the quiet gear...
The one that clicks,
and clicks,
and clicks.
The one that whispers rules I never agreed to.
The one that says
again
and
again
and
again
until my hands obey out of muscle memory or fear or both.
It tells me the world will fall apart if I don’t hold it together with rituals no one else can see.
I don’t know which version of me wakes up first each morning.
The one who runs,
the one who sinks,
or the one who counts the cracks in the floorboards and calls it safety.
Some days I feel like a storm wearing a borrowed body.
Some days I feel like a radio stuck between stations.
Some days I feel like a lock with too many keys and none of them fit.
But I’m still here,
even when the gears grind,
even when the switches flip without warning,
even when the static gets loud.
I’m still here,
trying to make sense of a mind that refuses to speak in a single language.
Maybe that’s its own kind of survival.