13/7/25 | Second Sunday of June | 2425
We walked through the park again today. The same route we’ve taken so many times before that my body knows it without instruction. There is something curious about repetition — how it so easily masks itself as comfort while quietly draining meaning from the experience. I recognized the trees, the curve in the path, the slightly overgrown flower bed by the fountain. And then I began recognizing the conversation.
They were saying the same things — not vaguely similar thoughts, not familiar ideas, but the same words. I remembered with a clarity that startled me. I told them. I said, “You’ve said this before — exactly this.” They dismissed it casually, as if the observation were trivial. And maybe to them it is. But to me it felt like a rupture.
Their indifference left me disoriented. As if I had caught reality doubling back on itself and no one else had noticed. It’s not the repetition that troubled me — it’s the unconsciousness of it. The way it suggested that much of what we experience is not lived, but performed. Habits of speech, habits of thought. We move through time without paying attention to it.
I drank a coffee I didn’t particularly want, from a trailer near the path. The warmth of the cup in my hand gave me something to do with myself while I tried to recover a sense of orientation. The caffeine made everything slightly more vivid, but also more raw. I’ve noticed that when I’m even slightly overstimulated, the illusion of detachment dissolves, and I start to feel everything at once.
The wind was strong. The clouds kept moving — sun, shadow, sun again. Each return of the light felt sudden, intrusive. Like being woken up. In those moments, I felt a kind of sharp presence in my own body, followed almost immediately by the desire to withdraw from it.
There were families everywhere. Children with their arms outstretched, running toward nothing. Dogs panting, barking, always in motion. And all around me, adults clinging to the routine of it all — the park, the coffee, the Sunday walk — as if it were proof of something. That we are stable. That we are together. That we are fine.
But I am not fine. I’m aware of that in a quiet, unspectacular way. Not falling apart — just quietly out of step. I don’t think they notice. I’ve trained myself well in the art of being agreeable, of anticipating moods and avoiding conflict. I serve harmony like it’s a duty. But today, the cracks showed. Not to them — to me.
I keep wondering: is it possible to be entirely present in a life where so much is built on repetition? Can we be free if we are always performing ourselves for others?
I don’t have answers today. Only the lingering sense that I was awake while everyone else was dreaming — or the other way around
