The Unraveling of Self

Every day feels like a battle against a war I didn’t start, but that I can never escape. There’s no escape from the churning void inside, no anchor, no compass. I’ve spent most of my life lost, a body walking through the motions while my mind tumbles in a million directions at once. The words who am I feel like an open wound that never heals. The question isn’t just existential, it’s a constant, searing ache that cuts deeper with every attempt to find an answer.

It's a label, a diagnosis, a clinical term that tries to frame the unframeable. But those who live with it know it isn’t just a condition; it’s a world unto itself. A world built on the shifting sands of identity, where nothing is solid, where every reflection I see in the mirror is a distorted version of the person I might be. Who am I today? Who will I be tomorrow? I don’t know. I never know.

The world around me feels like a storm, chaotic, violent, impossible to control. I’m swept up in it.. feelings that rise like a flood and crash with a force that is beyond my understanding. One moment I am euphoric, in love with everything and everyone, convinced that the people in my life are the only things that matter. The next, the entire world is against me, every tiny slight feels like a betrayal, every action a rejection of my very soul. It’s as though my emotions are the puppeteers, tugging at the strings of my heart, my mind, and I am powerless to stop them.

The explosion comes without warning—intense, raw, and blinding. I am overwhelmed by rage, sadness, fear, frustration… all at once. The world becomes unbearable, unbearable because I cannot find a way to contain these feelings. They pour out of me like fire, scorched and scorching, and I am left standing in the ashes. It’s as if I can never express myself in a way that doesn’t send ripples of destruction through everything I touch. One wrong move, one misstep, and the fragile walls I’ve built crumble under the weight of my outbursts, leaving me hollowed out, exposed, vulnerable, and ashamed.

But worse than the emotions themselves is the feeling of not knowing who I am when the dust settles. I look at myself and wonder: Is this me? Is this person I see, this person I’ve just become, the real me—or am I just the echo of someone else’s pain, someone else’s fear, someone else’s unspoken hurt? I become trapped in this distorted version of myself, endlessly searching for a core that never seems to exist. I am a shapeshifter in my own life, constantly assuming roles I never fully understand, slipping in and out of skins that don’t quite fit.

There’s no stability in my world, no foundation beneath my feet. I crave validation like a parched desert needs rain. The approval of others is the only way I can convince myself that I’m real, that I matter. When they love me, I feel whole. When they pull away, I vanish into the ether of despair, my sense of self crumbling further, as if my entire existence were built on a foundation of fragility and illusion. But how can I ask others to love me when I cannot even love myself?

The internal chaos is overwhelming. It’s a deafening noise that never quiets. There’s a constant whirlpool of self-doubt, self-loathing, and confusion that churns beneath the surface. My identity isn’t just a blurry image, it’s an empty canvas, one that I desperately try to paint, but every stroke feels wrong, every color feels misplaced. There is no me here, only fragments, jagged pieces of a shattered mirror, none of which ever quite come together to form a whole. The parts of me that others see are reflections of who I think they want me to be. But I am not sure of anything... Not even myself.

And yet, I am always reaching for something: a sense of stability, a sense of belonging, a sense of me. I want to know who I am, so badly, but the answer is always elusive, always just out of reach. Every relationship feels like a high wire act, every emotion a tidal wave, every thought a fleeting shadow.

Some days, it feels like I am drowning, swallowed by this relentless ocean of emotions that I cannot contain. Other days, it’s like I am floating, suspended in space, untethered to anything solid. Both are terrifying. Both leave me yearning for an anchor I can never find.

I am in constant conflict, never knowing which version of myself I will be when I wake up in the morning. I am a storm, and every relationship I have is caught in its wake. They pull away, then come back, and I am caught in a cycle of self-doubt and longing, desperately clinging to anything that offers me a glimpse of who I might be.

But maybe… maybe there is no simple answer. Maybe there is no single me. Maybe I am not meant to be one solid thing. Maybe I am just a collection of emotions, experiences, fragments—and I am learning, always learning, to exist within this chaos. The journey is long, and the path is obscured by the fog of self-doubt. But somewhere, maybe, there is hope. Maybe one day I’ll learn to accept this shattered self, not because it’s perfect, but because it is mine. Even in the rubble, there is something worth holding onto.

And perhaps in that holding on, amid the chaos, I will find, not a stable version of me, but the strength to simply be, no matter how fractured, no matter how lost. Because being lost, for now, is all I know.