The World Keeps Turning, Even When I Don’t

There is something unsettling about waking up and realizing that you’ve been performing your life instead of living it.
You speak. You walk. You laugh on cue. You say, “I’m fine,” because that is what the script requires, and everyone around you is acting too, so no one questions the delivery.

The world feels… rehearsed.
Like everyone learned the choreography except me.

I watch people rush to their jobs, to their obligations, to their “purpose,” their eyes hollow but determined, as if motion alone will save them from thinking.
And I move with them, because standing still would make me noticeable, and I don’t know if I want to be seen or erased.

Maybe both.

There are days when the sky looks too big, and I feel too small.
Days when I wonder if I’m made of air, invisible and light enough to float away.
Days when the dreams where I am gone feel warmer than the reality where I still exist.

It’s a strange loneliness — the kind you can feel in a crowded room.
The kind that sits behind your ribs and presses, slowly.
The kind you don’t cry about anymore, because tears imply an overflow of emotion, and I am mostly empty now.

I remember being a child and thinking life would feel different.
I thought there would be a moment where everything would click into place.
A moment of belonging.
Of certainty.
Of being understood.

Instead, I learned how to sit still.
How to nod.
How to not ask questions.
How to disappear while still occupying space.

“Hello, teacher. Tell me, what’s my lesson?”
I swear I’ve been asking that my entire life.
But the world looks right through me —
and sometimes I look through it too.

Everyone is running in circles.
No destination.
Just movement.

A mad world.

And yet…
there is a quiet part of me that still hopes.
The softest, smallest part.
The part I don’t look at directly, in case it vanishes.

A candle waiting for a flame.

Maybe that’s enough.
For today.
For now.

So I stay.

Even when it hurts.
Even when it’s silent.
Even when I feel like smoke.

I stay.

And the world keeps turning.

Yours—
but only in the spaces where no one looks.

I remain,
like frost on a window
no one bothers to warm.

With a heartbeat made of quiet cracks,
and a smile that never reaches the eyes.

Onnaya