It starts like a hairline crack in glass — barely visible, barely audible, but growing louder beneath the skin. You’re sitting in a room full of people, pretending to exist, and suddenly, something inside you folds. Not loudly. Not violently. Just enough to rupture the illusion. Your fingers twitch like static, your breath gets caught between pretending and panicking, and your body — traitorous and trembling — begins to betray every well-rehearsed silence. No one notices. No one ever does. Because the collapse is too quiet, too internal, too elegantly hidden. You’re a burning house with fresh paint. A scream that never made it past the throat.
They call it overthinking. You call it drowning in a place where the water looks like air. And what hurts isn’t just the moment itself — it’s the cruel choreography of it: the way you clench your jaw to keep from unraveling, the way you apologize for your shaking hands, the way you lie and say “stomach ache” when what you mean is "my insides forgot how to hold me together.”
It’s a strange thing — to feel so much and still wonder if any of it is valid.
To cry in bathrooms and elevators and behind closed eyes
And still blame yourself for being the only one who notices the fracture.
~K
