this isn’t right. it’s not that something’s broken, or missing, or misaligned. it’s not like the furniture’s all wrong or the light doesn’t hit the windows quite right. it’s not that something hasn’t arrived yet or that something’s been forgotten. it’s not even chaos. it’s not noise or clutter or imbalance. it’s just… not right. completely and fundamentally not right. like an itch you can’t reach or a word that’s just out of grasp.
it’s like stepping into a house that looks exactly like yours. same number on the door, same creak in the floorboard when you step in, same smell in the hallway. but none of it settles in your bones the way home should. none of it says you belong here. you try to make it make sense—check your phone, retrace your steps, say maybe i’m tired, maybe i’m overwhelmed—but deep down, you know. this is not right. it looks like it, but it isn’t.
and i’m halfway across the world at this very moment, technically somewhere beautiful, somewhere people save up and dream about, but none of that lands. it feels like i’ve slipped out of sync with everything. like the version of me that was supposed to be here is stuck in traffic and i’m just the understudy waiting to be told what to do next. i sit still, i try to be quiet, i try to rot in peace. and even that—something that should be so easy—feels off. like i’m failing at doing nothing.
i reach out, throw little lines into the water. a few texts, a few updates. but everyone’s busy, everyone’s in their rhythm. they’ve got their right houses with their right people and their right routines. and that’s fine. really, i mean that. i’m not bitter. it’s not resentment. it’s just observation. if i were in my right house, i’d probably be unreachable too. i’d be folding laundry or making dinner or doing some deeply mundane thing and loving it because it would feel like mine. but instead i’m here, floating above everything like a ghost in my own life.
i wonder if i’m supposed to be doing something about this. like, is there a map? am i supposed to be hunting for the right house like a lost dog sniffing its way back home? or is that the wrong metaphor. maybe you don’t find the house, maybe you build it. maybe you unpack one box at a time until the wrong place softens and reshapes itself around you. maybe it never feels exactly right, but it becomes less wrong. but i don’t know. i don’t even know what kind of wallpaper i’d pick if given the chance.
i keep trying to find something to hold onto—some thread that will anchor me—but most of the time i just feel like i’m slipping. not in a dramatic, falling-off-a-cliff kind of way, more like a slow slide into nothing in particular. like time is leaking out around me, pooling on the floor, and i can’t scoop it up fast enough.
so here i am. suspended in this almost-life, with too much and not enough all at once. feeling like i’m burning daylight, squandering beauty, letting things wilt in my hands. but i don’t know how to stop it. or change it. or even name it properly. i just know this isn’t right. and that i’m tired of pretending like it might be if i just squint hard enough.
