Chapter 1 - Testing

This will probably be the only piece on this blog where my tone sounds this personal. Most of the time I am more comfortable observing things from a distance than speaking directly about myself. I prefer dissecting patterns in people, culture, and belief rather than exposing the person behind those observations. But this story cannot be told from that distance. So if you are reading this, consider it a rare moment. This is not really an essay. It is simply me speaking to myself while you happen to be standing close enough to hear it. The rest of what I write will return to its colder tone, but this part needs to remain personal, because it explains why any of these words exist at all.

Writing was never supposed to become anything serious in my life. For most of the years I have known myself, it existed quietly among many other curiosities I picked up along the way. I have always been the kind of person whose mind refuses to stay in one place for too long. I drew obsessively, learned instruments, threw myself into sports, swimming, dancing, languages — not out of discipline, but because the structure of a new skill fascinated me. My mind collects systems. Writing was simply one of them, and to be honest, I never even considered it my strongest one.

I make my living with my voice. Conversations, negotiations, reading people while they speak and adjusting the direction of a discussion while it is still unfolding. My instincts have always been sharper in spoken language than on paper. Writing never felt like a weapon or a talent. It felt more like a quiet space where I could test my own thoughts without interruption.

But the habit itself began much earlier.

When I was a child, my father gave me a notebook. It had thick, unlined paper — the kind meant for drawing. At the time it was supposed to be a sketchbook. The pages were textured, strong enough to hold charcoal or ink. But somewhere along the way, I started writing in it. Slowly, without noticing when it shifted, that sketchbook stopped being a place for drawings and became something else.

It became my diary.

At first, it was no different from any child’s diary. Small records of ordinary days. Today I built a sandcastle. Today I planted something. Today something funny happened. Those pages were not reflections. They were simply proof that a day had existed.

But at some point, without a clear moment of transition, the notebook changed its role in my life. I stopped writing about what I did and started writing about what I noticed. Mostly about people. Small reactions that didn’t match the situation. Moments where someone’s words and behavior drifted apart within minutes. Contradictions that stayed in my mind longer than they should have.

At that age, I didn’t have the language to explain what fascinated me about those observations. I only knew that something about human behavior kept pulling my attention back to it. And maybe the truth is that the notebook slowly became something more than just a place to write.

It became a kind of companion.

Because when I was younger, I never really knew how to make friends properly. ADHD has a strange way of isolating you while still making you social. I have always been able to talk to anyone, anywhere. Conversations came easily. But staying inside relationships — understanding their continuity, their rhythm — took me much longer to learn.

So the notebook listened.

And I kept writing.

Around the time I reached high school, another habit grew alongside it. Memorization.

It began with languages. Whenever I encountered a word or phrase that caught my attention, I felt an almost physical need to remember it exactly as it was. That habit followed me for years and eventually turned into something more practical — by the time I was twenty-five, I had learned four languages. But at the time, it didn’t feel like a skill. It felt like a compulsion.

Later, that same instinct extended to literature. That was when Attila İlhan entered my life.

For reasons I still cannot fully explain, his poems stayed with me. I didn’t just read them, I carried them. I memorized them in a way that felt less like learning and more like storing something I would need later. I would repeat lines quietly while walking, while waiting, while doing something completely ordinary, almost like a prayer under my breath.

The strange part is that the emotions inside those poems described things I had not yet lived through. Heartbreak, betrayal, loss. I didn’t fully understand them, and yet repeating those lines felt necessary, as if I was preparing for something I hadn’t experienced yet.

Looking back now, I think those poems taught me something before life did.

They allowed me to memorize emotion before I encountered it.

In a strange way, they were my first attempt at becoming human through someone else’s pain.

“Jezabel kan içinde yatardı…”

Even when I didn’t understand the full meaning, I understood the weight. And the feeling stayed somewhere inside me, waiting for the moment life would eventually catch up with it.

Somewhere in the middle of those years, I also tried writing a novel. It reached around one hundred and twenty pages before I stopped. I barely remember the story now. What I remember clearly is what happened after I finished it.

I couldn’t keep it.

The idea that those pages existed under my name made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t fully explain. I ended up giving the entire manuscript to my best friend at the time, almost like handing over something fragile that I didn’t want to carry myself. I trusted her to keep it.

It wasn’t embarrassment. It was closer to shame.

Writing exposes the structure of your mind. Once those pages existed, I could no longer pretend those thoughts lived only inside me. They had taken form. And letting someone read them felt almost like standing exposed without knowing whether you trusted them enough to see you that clearly.

For a long time after that, writing remained private for that exact reason. The diaries continued, the observations continued, but they stayed inside notebooks that belonged only to me. Those pages were never meant to be shared. They functioned more like a mirror.

I would write something down so that months or years later I could return to it and ask myself:

Why did I think like this?
Why did this feel so certain back then?
Why does the same idea feel different now?

Eventually, that quiet habit became this blog.

Not because I suddenly wanted readers. The idea of people reading this still feels slightly uncomfortable. I will probably keep it hidden for as long as I can. But I realized I needed a place where I could write without adjusting my thoughts to other people’s expectations. A place where everything could stay as it is — unedited, unperformed, uncorrected.

Not as a performance. Not as a diary in the traditional sense. Something closer to a record.

A record of how my mind works.

Most personal blogs today either turn into self-help or aesthetics. I never wanted mine to become either. What interests me is something closer to personal anthropology — using my own experiences as a way to observe patterns in people, belief systems, and behavior.

Because even when I write about my feelings, what I end up examining are the structures around them. The invisible rules people follow without noticing. The emotional reflexes that repeat across different lives. The assumptions no one questions, simply because they are shared.

That is the real reason I write.

Not to impress.
Not to teach.
Not even to express emotion in the way people expect.

I write because it allows me to observe my own mind the same way I observe the world.

Writing creates a distance between the person who experiences something and the person who examines it later. A sentence written today becomes evidence tomorrow. And years from now, when I read these pages again, I will probably meet a version of myself I barely recognize.

She will think differently. She will believe different things. She will be wrong about things I am certain of today.

But at least I will know how she saw the world.

For most of my life, writing existed privately for that reason. It was never about creating something perfect. It was about leaving traces.

And publishing those traces here still feels strange. Because every page removes a layer of distance. It leaves something visible that cannot be taken back.

Years from now, I will probably read this and feel like I am meeting someone I once knew very well, but no longer fully understand.

But maybe that is the point.

Writing was never meant to create a perfect version of myself. It was meant to document the imperfect ones as they passed through time.

And if one day I return to these words and realize how much I have changed, then at least I will know one thing for certain:

At that moment, whoever I was when I wrote them — she was honest.

And sometimes, that is the only thing writing can preserve.

For those who are reading this, welcome. It is a strange experience to be seen by someone who was never meant to see you this closely.

And for the version of me who might return to these words years from now…

I understand why you became her.Years from now, I will probably return to these pages and feel like I am meeting someone I once knew very well, but no longer fully recognize. Not because she was wrong, but because she was unfinished. There is a particular discomfort in witnessing your own past clarity and realizing how confidently you misunderstood certain things.

But maybe that is the only honest function of writing.

Not to prove that you were right.
Not to construct something admirable.
But to leave behind evidence of how you once saw the world, before life rearranged your conclusions without asking for your permission.

Because the truth is, none of these versions of me were ever stable. They were temporary structures, built with whatever understanding I had at the time, held together just long enough to feel convincing.

And if I am being honest, I don’t write to preserve myself.

I write to see, in real time, what in me is about to collapse next.

SAYANORA...