The Sound of Something Breaking

This isn’t a story — it’s a question

Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

I have a question for you.

I don’t want the answer yet.

I want it lodged under your skin like a fishhook, tugging every time you move. I want it damp in your throat, clogging the words you might otherwise use to distract yourself. Let it rot there for a while. Let it itch.

Do you ever stop trying to be what you’re not?

I didn’t. God, I didn’t.

Not when it shrank me down to a dull nub, as if being harmless was an achievement. Not when every gesture calcified into choreography so seamless I forgot there was a Self beneath it — one with knees that didn’t lock and a spine that bent for no one.

I didn’t stop because I thought this was living — the way a caged bird might call cramped flight “freedom.”

The knowing didn’t tiptoe in.

It violated. A brick through my ribcage. A low-level earthquake rolling under the floorboards, taking its time before the collapse.

Picture that childhood game: breath held at the bottom of a pool, eyes burning from chlorine, your body light in the water… until suddenly it’s not a game — your chest is turning itself…