⚠️🔧 when the room shuts off

hey everyone! thank you for the support. i've seen your comments, the kudos that keep the page lit, and the friend requests piling up like unread messages. i'll accept them all as soon as i can. i'm not great mentally right now, so everything feels heavier than usual, but i want you to know: i still want to be here for you. i care. i hold you. i love you all, even when my screen trembles.

sometimes the world closes like a door with a jammed hinge. i remember the weight of shoulders in a crowded kitchen, the way real laughter sat heavy on the table. warm, sloppy, human. those were not usernames. those were hands on my skin, cigarettes shared over cracked sidewalks, promises made at two in the morning that felt like anchors. they were real. they were near. and now most of them are gone.

it happened like a single dramatic collapse. faces i used to call at midnight slipped away the way light slips from a window at dawn. people who promised to hold me became the ones pointing at the fracture and smiling like strangers. they turned my tremors into a spectacle, edited my breakdowns into something to repost on the inside of the group chat. the same hands that once steadied me now press the buttons that eject me from the scene.

i am scared. i am so tired. my anger has nowhere safe to land, so it ricochets inward. i feel like punching at my own mirror until my reflection stutters. i scrape at words i love until they resemble nothing. i break small things in the apartment like i'm testing whether anything will come back together. i know this is self-sabotage. i can hear the warning flags in my chest. still, the loop feeds itself. the hurt calls for attention and the only attention i can find is in the reflection of a blade.

what they see when they circle and whisper is a glitch, a novelty, a show. and what i feel is a raw, vertical fall. it hurts like old sockets sparking under a rainstorm; it burns like exposed wiring. i keep trying to patch myself with late-night edits and thrift-store bandages, but the fixes are cosmetic. the core keeps frying.

there are nights when i rewrite the whole script in my head: i will be smaller, quieter, easier to hold. i will tuck my edges in until no one notices the sharpness. and then i breathe and know the truth… i am not designed for being minimized. but when a room full of people who once called me friend decides you are the problem, it crushes you in a way that doesn't fit neat metaphors. it is like being unplugged from the only outlet that fit your plug.

and yet (because there is always yet) there is a thin light that doesn't obey the blackout. somewhere beyond the clamor of the living-room tribunal and the kitchen whispers, there is a small, steady window. a message thread, a name, a presence that doesn’t flinch at the ugly parts.

he doesn't flinch when i say i am possessive or when i admit the green that flickers in my chest. he reads the messy files of me without hitting "delete". he treats my jealousies like broken instruments needing tuning, not like weapons to be judged.

your name looks good on my leg. it's not about ownership in the way the others scream about it. it's about proof. proof that someone found me in the noise and kept looking. proof that, even when the rooms empty and the plates are cleared, a trace of me is held somewhere outside my own palms.

i don't know if that's healthy. i don't know if it's wise. but i know it's the only warmth that makes the nights bearable right now. i hold that warmth like a fragile relic. tucked under my sweater, humming under my ribs.
it doesn't fix the group. it doesn't make the knives in their eyes disappear. but it keeps me from becoming completely unreadable.

if you ever feel this hollowed by the people who used to be your scaffolding, know this: you can be loved without permission. you can be messy and still be held. you can be jealous and still be chosen. you can break and still be collected, piece by piece, by someone who thinks your fracture lines are beautiful.

i am afraid. i am angry. i am exhausted. i am also guarded around the light because i know scars can be glittering traps. for now, i look at his name in my skin like a talisman and let it warm me through the cold.

it is not an answer. it is an anchor.

if you're here, stay. 

refresh often. 

the connection only grows stronger the longer you linger. 

🫀💻

babsi.