In Between

Between chaos and order,
I am a giant mess
who knows how to laugh at herself.

An air-spirit carrying her mind
up in the clouds,
somewhere inside her La La Land.

I kept showing up unapologetically as me.
That was what crowds kept loving about me.
Authenticity is undernourished,
yet highly cherished
in a world exhausted by pretending.

Somewhere along the way,
I began to expect the same bubbly version
to keep appearing.

And in time,
that became its own kind of pretending.

Restraining my essence,
letting only one part of me exist.

I need an escape.
I can’t do this.

Expected not only to live,
but to construct
for myself,
and for others in return.

I didn’t see it then.
I see it now.

For most of my life,
I didn’t feel seen.
So I made myself seen.

An extrovert energised by social interaction.
In every conversation,
I knew how to meet the other person.
It came naturally to me.

I need some air.
I can’t breathe.

Eventually,
that part grew tired of the world.
It broke the wheel
that carried everything.

Slowly, I stopped showing up.
For others.
And for life itself.

Every gaze I met
carried an element of blame.
But the outer world
has always been a reflection
of what’s within.

I stayed long enough
for the blame to be pinned,
even as it rose from inside me.

My heart used to drop a dream
into every shade,
but now its echoes
feel like strangers living within.

The same question kept returning:

What is happening to me?

I’ve been feeling numb.
Not particularly bad or good.
Just numb.

Avoidant.
Effortless.

Like a ghost,
living as if I’m here,
but not really.

I don’t care about anything.

I hate it when people meet me
with consoling words
wrapped around sympathy
when I say I’ve retreated
into my own world.

But what if
I’m happy
just being?

Still, the fear lives in me.
The fear of throwing away
everything I’ve ever built.

That’s where my thoughts split.

Some days,
I believe this shift
will reveal something groundbreaking.

Other days,
self-doubt forges itself
like a second skin.

I’m far from clarity.

I’m standing in between.
A place where
I don’t have the energy to do more,
yet what I give
still feels lacking.

Disappointed,
my shifting pattern slips into autopilot
while I try to make sense
of my inner world.

Yet somehow, this doesn’t feel like erasing myself.
No, not abandonment either.

If anything,
there’s a quiet kind of calm relief in it
that makes me wonder
if this is me finding myself.

I see it now.
I was always the obedient kind.
Always responsive.
Always on top of everything.

Until one day,
I asked myself:
But what really is the point?

I had built a life full of motion,
forgetting myself in its rhythm,
leaving no room for rest to exist.

I’m not depressed.
I didn’t give up on living.

This is the little girl in me,
reacting.
She asks for play.

Fueling my imagination
with countless dreams
and hazards of possibilities.

I owe her everything.
And if she wants to rebel
against the structure I built to survive,
let it be.

My war has always been within.

Even if I try,
I can’t bring myself to do anything
forcefully.

And maybe for the first time,
my thoughts are compassionate.

Because nothing is the end of the world,
except the end of the world itself.

If it happens, it will
is now my way of living.
And I can’t think of anything more freeing.

After a long while,
maybe this is the time
I actually feel like breathing.

Life is not always about
holding everything together.
Sometimes it’s about
letting things slip.

I am not yet who I want to be.
That doesn’t mean I never will be.

In truth,
I’m not really rushing to get there.

Because I’m sure of one thing:
in a world of endless expectations,
it’s easy to mistake pressure for purpose.

If this found you in a pause you haven’t named yet, you’re not alone.
I’d love to know what this season feels like for you, even if it’s just one word.

This story exists in more than one form.

It began as words, moved into sound, found breath, and became multidimensional storytelling, something lived rather than observed.

For a fully immersive experience, the original poem and song live together in the full video here.

Author’s note:

I keep most of my writing here free because I believe in stories being something people can stumble into without a barrier in front of them. At the same time, a four-minute video often takes hours. Paid subscriptions are about sustaining this level of depth, experimentation, and presence so it can keep growing in the way it already is. If this space has ever made you feel seen, steadied, or quietly accompanied, and if you’re in a position to do so, becoming a paid subscriber is the simplest way to support the work and keep it alive.

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