crcrcarl

[crcrcarl]

mon cheri 💕

[crcrcarl]

sometimes i wonder about the version of me that didn’t survive—not the one who physically disappeared, but the parts that got swallowed by silence. the parts that folded under pressure, under the weight of being unseen, and unheard. the me who dreamed too big but got crushed by a world that didn’t have room for those dreams.

it’s wild how we bury ourselves alive, hoping that if we stay quiet, the pain won’t catch us. but pain isn’t like a ghost you can just ignore. it’s a pulse beneath the skin, like a shadow you carry even when you try to forget.

i remember waiting for the door to open when i was seven, and hours folding into days. my heart beating between hope and fear. not just afraid my mother wouldn’t come home, but terrified she was lost somewhere—broken in a way i didn’t know how to fix.

i was sinking. sinking into questions with no answers, wondering why love felt like something i had to earn, why the person who was supposed to protect me couldn’t stay.

it’s crazy how one simple thought can be a slow death to your self-worth. that poison drips quietly, and eroding every piece of beauty you once believed you had inside. and when the person who’s supposed to be your safe place doesn’t even acknowledge the hole they left.

that night was cold, not just the chill in the air but the numbness in my soul. my brother acted like everything was fine, and that only made me feel more alone. maybe denial is easier for some people, but for me, the silence was deafening.

i sat with the ache,

the absence,

the pain of being left behind.

and i cried in grief that cuts through every forced smile, and every lie you tell yourself just to survive.

they say abandonment isn’t always intentional, and that people who love you don’t always know how to stay. but how do you explain that to a child who feels invisible? how do you make sense of needing someone who’s not there?

maybe healing isn’t about forgetting. maybe it’s about carrying the bruises gently, and letting the scars tell a story but not the whole story.

so here i am, crying in the dark, holding pieces of a past that never really left me.

but also holding something else—maybe just stubbornness, and the refusal to disappear completely.

and honestly, maybe that’s enough. maybe that’s everything.

[crcrcarl]

i don’t know when this obsession started with beautiful sadness.

maybe it was when i realized people only listen when you’re poetic about your pain.

because if you just say “i’m not okay,” they’ll say same, and scroll past. but if you say, “my ribs are tired of holding in everything i never said,” they’ll repost it.

so now i write like i’m bleeding out,

just to feel heard.

and maybe when i realized i wasn’t built for small talk, or maybe when hozier whispered like god owed him something and i nodded, because maybe me too.

i collect artists like symptoms—kafka, hozier, bukowski on bad days, sylvia on worse.

i like hozier because he makes religion sound like sex, and sex sound like something sacred.

i read kafka not because i enjoy being confused, but because confusion feels more honest than certainty.

i’m not sure if it makes me deep or just dramatically sad.

maybe both.

maybe neither.

i read not for answers but for company, because books don’t judge if you cry halfway through a sentence.

unlike people.

people want you to summarize your grief in 140 characters or shut the hell up.

i write because therapy’s expensive and i don’t trust strangers with my ghosts.

i write letters i’ll never send because it’s easier to romanticize absence than admit something i didn’t do.

people ask what i like—i say literature, but i mean, the moments between lines when it feels like the writer accidentally wrote my name.

i say music, but i mean, the exact 3 seconds in that one song where i feel something crack inside me.

and i say love, but i mean—please, just see me.

i study philosophy and psychology like i’m trying to fix myself with other people’s words, or like they’ll hand me the cheat codes to existing.

spoiler alert: they don’t.

freud says it’s my mom.

freud makes me uncomfortable.

camus says it’s the absurdity of existence.

nietzsche makes me want to punch a wall.

but i read them anyway because i need answers to questions that probably don’t have any.

i say maybe i’m just tired and needed a hug and a nap that lasts until the system collapses.

i play piano like i’m mourning something i haven’t lost yet.

maybe innocence.

maybe hope.

i play piano like i’m apologizing to the universe. every note is a sorry, every silence is a scream.

maybe the version of me that believed in permanence because people tell me i’m too emotional.

i’m sorry if my emotional range is hungry or horny.

i feel everything at volume 100 and still manage to look unbothered.

that’s trauma.

that’s theatre, sweetie.

musical theatre raised me better than religion ever did.

at least when elphaba sings “defying gravity,” i believe in something even if it’s just the illusion of escape.

i’m in awe with strangers who read poetry and with friends who quote philosophers mid convo without trying to sound smart.

i’m in awe with people who listen, like actually listen, not the ones who wait for their turn to talk.

i’m melancholic but functional, like a haunted coffee shop or a philosopher with a 9-to-5.

i believe in love like it’s a damn revolution but i write about it like a war i already lost. some days i am tenderness in motion, and other days, i am spite with eyeliner.

these are my people—the feelers, the overthinkers, the ones who ask “why?” not to get an answer, but to prove the world still owes them one.

i love them.

and i love me, a little,

for surviving this long without switching off the part of me that still believes art will save something.

even if it's just me.

[crcrcarl]

this gif