Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s the lack of good sleep. Maybe it’s the alignment of planets. The evil eye. The karmic debt. The fury of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. A short circuit in the ancient parts of my brain, those that I share with lizards and frogs.

Maybe it’s none of this crap.

Whatever it is, I feel like a scared soldier, hiding from a war that ended long ago. Feeling all his old wounds come alive with the slightest change of weather.

It’s not so much the hurt. It’s being alone with the hurt.

This cosmic way of being out of sorts.

Wearing your inside out and making the impossible to hide it.

This all too familiar vulnerability. The constricting feeling in the chest, as if the walls are closing in.

The feeling of being cornered by something you must absolutely escape. Fight or flight. Escape at all costs.

Choose your poison and drown in it. Your favorite toxin, your sickening sweet self-sabotaging story. The one you hate but still cannot let go of. Your preferred “I’m shit and I’ll never be enough” narrative.

Will I ever be able to get up, smile, and sing?

Will I ever be loved again?

Will I ever amount to anything?

Was I ever loved?

The things we keep in the dark.