After a while, you don’t notice you’ve left.
I didn’t realise how long I’d been drifting.
Routine is sneaky like that.
It camouflages everything.
Quietly.
Politely.
Almost responsibly.
You disappear in plain sight.
Somewhere between the motions, I stopped being.
I’m showering.
Twice a day, even.
The water’s hot,
but it might as well be a memory of heat.
I register it,
I don’t feel it.
I’m brushing my teeth.
Replying to emails.
Making ambitious to-do lists
I ignore,
but still feel strangely proud of.
So I must be fine.
Right?
And yet, somewhere between
haha sounds good
and scrolling through other people’s perfectly curated lives
(while saving hundreds of posts I’ll never open),
I think I quietly ghosted myself.
Not dramatically.
Not a runaway-in-the-night kind of thing.
Just… gone.
The kind of absence that looks like presence
if you don’t look too closely.
Fresh clothes.
Good skincare.
A convincing smile.
Health check-ups.
Dentist visits.
Everything looks fine on paper.
The lights are on,
but whatever makes me, me
is somewhere else.
My journal entries read strange lately:
“Didn’t feel much today.”
“Everything’s ok, I think?”
They sound like someone
trying to prove they still exist.
Meals appear.
I swallow them.
I don’t remember making half of them.
And this is coming from someone
who used to grind every spice for Thai curry paste from scratch.
Green and red.
Life moves.
People hit the milestones
we’re supposed to hit.
And I’m here
double-tapping like applause from the audience.
Messages from people I love sit unread.
Not because I don’t care.
Because being a person
feels like a lot.
So I keep conversations soft.
Shallow.
Manageable.
Pretending everything’s fine
while feeling even further away.
There’s a dull ache
where something used to spark.
It’s quiet.
Heavy.
Hard to name.
I’m still here.
For now.
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