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“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche



There is something I don’t say in the way I write, and maybe this is the only place where I stop controlling it.

I make it look like I understand things early and act accordingly, like I see the pattern, recognize the outcome, and remove myself before anything has the chance to get complicated. And it’s not untrue. I do see things early. I do understand people faster than I should. I notice inconsistencies, shifts in tone, the small misalignments between what is said and what is done. And once I see it, I can’t unsee it. That’s where the distance begins.

But what I don’t say is that this distance is not always something I chose because it’s better. Sometimes it’s just something I don’t know how to turn off.

Because there is another version of me, and she is much simpler than the one writing all of this. If I feel something for someone, she would just text them, tell them. Not once, not strategically and patiently observing, not after thinking about how it will be perceived. She would just text them because she felt like it. If she loves someone, she would say it in the moment it feels real, not after filtering it through ego, timing, or control. She wouldn’t be thinking about balance or power or whether she’s giving more than she’s receiving. She would just feel it and let it exist.

And I don’t do that.

Even when I feel something, a part of me is already stepping back, organizing it, placing it somewhere it can’t disrupt me too much. I don’t fall into things, I enter them carefully, and if something starts to look unstable, I leave before it has the chance to collapse on me. It sounds like discipline when I explain it. It even sounds like self-respect.

But sometimes it feels like I am interrupting my own life before it fully happens.

If things were different, if I was raised differently, if my brain worked differently, I don’t think I would be this controlled. I wouldn’t be so afraid of making mistakes. I would make more of them, openly, without trying to correct them while they are still happening. I would do what I feel like doing without turning it into something that needs to be justified.

I would be warmer to myself.

I wouldn’t constantly choose strength over softness, control over comfort. I wouldn’t sacrifice my own needs just because I can carry more than the other person. I wouldn’t keep meeting the same kind of people, the ones I already understand too well, the ones I know how to handle, but who slowly take something from me anyway.

I would let things be easier.

I would just enjoy the existence of people who cross my path instead of measuring them, analyzing them, deciding too early what they are and what they are not.

And the strange part is, I know exactly what I would want.

Something simple. Something quiet. A life that doesn’t require this much awareness just to function inside it. Sometimes I think about disappearing somewhere warm, somewhere tropical, building something small, growing my own food, waking up without needing to measure anything, without needing to optimize myself, without needing to understand everything before I allow myself to live it.

And even as I write this, it sounds delusional to me.

Like I am describing a version of life that I don’t actually believe I can have. Like I am negotiating with myself just to even admit that I want something this simple. Even writing this feels like I am going against the version of myself I’ve built so carefully.

Because the truth is, I don’t even allow myself to be fully seen like this.

I write all of this, but I still hide it. I control who reads it, who gets access to it, as if these thoughts are something that would weaken me if they were exposed. There are people who have known me for years, people who think they understand me, and they have never seen this version of how I think.

Not because I don’t have it.

But because I don’t show it.

And if I was different, I wouldn’t do that either.

I wouldn’t hide what I feel just because it feels too open, too unprotected. I wouldn’t treat my own mind like something that needs to be filtered before it is allowed to exist in front of others. I would just be more honest about what is happening inside me, without trying to manage how it looks from the outside.

I wouldn’t let control decide everything.

I wouldn’t let my emotions sit there and slowly rot just because my ego refuses to let them exist in a way that looks vulnerable. I wouldn’t stay in this constant state of managing myself, adjusting, calculating, observing.

I wouldn’t always be in survival mode.

I would just live.

And I don’t say this with pride. There is nothing impressive about being this aware all the time. It doesn’t make things easier, it just makes them clearer, and sometimes clarity doesn’t help, it just removes the illusions that made things softer.

So when I write about people, about patterns, about the way things work, it might sound like I’m standing outside of it, like I’ve figured something out and moved past it.

But I haven’t, I’m inside it too.

I just don’t know how to be inside it without trying to control it. And maybe that’s not strength. Maybe it’s just the only way I learned how to survive.

So maybe this is why I decided to share this openly, at least with a few people I believe can read it without turning it into something it’s not. Not to impress, not to explain, just to stop hiding it this carefully. This is probably the closest I’ve ever let anyone get to the way my mind actually works, and I’m aware of how exposed that sounds even as I write it.

I don’t know how it will be read, or what parts will make sense, or what parts will be misunderstood, but I think I’m okay with that for once. If you’re here, reading this, then you’re already closer to me than most people have ever been.

And maybe, after everything I’ve said, everything I’ve tried to control and understand and structure, the truth is much simpler than all of it.

I’m just a person.

Not as composed as I look, not as detached as I sound.

Just a person with a mind that doesn’t stop, and a few softer versions of herself she doesn’t always know how to live as.

I hope time will change things in ways I can’t fully see yet. There was a version of me that would have never allowed this, never shared thoughts like this with anyone, never let herself be read this closely. And maybe, slowly, I’ll learn how to live with this version of me too, the one that doesn’t hide as much, even if she still doesn’t know what to do with that kind of openness.