nottheoneoftroy

[nottheoneoftroy]

There are days when the room is warm but the words are cold. I walked into that therapy session with one weight on my chest and walked out with a dozen unnamed shadows clinging to my back.

I’ve spent years convincing myself that 23 doesn’t need a map, that uncertainty isn’t failure, just fog. But today it felt like I was being asked to read the future aloud.

They want to know what comes next. As if I could trace the unknown with anything more than a trembling fingertip. As if there were signs posted at every bend: “Next stop, fulfillment,” “Turn left for peace.”

No one tells you that the GPS reroutes in silence. Or that some turns never reappear once missed. And still, they ask if I have a plan— as if I’m irresponsible for not naming a destination on a road I’ve only just started to walk.

I’d rather say “I don’t know” than keep playing the character who always answers before the question is even finished. The one with five-year plans that shift like clouds in bad weather.

So I’m retiring her. Let her rest, along with the lies I told to fit into boardrooms and timelines.

Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I just want someone to say, “It’s okay not to know.” Not to have it all solved, wrapped in ambition and deadlines. Not to pretend I’m not quietly unraveling beneath this costume of certainty.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I spent this weekend tracing shadows in my chest—an anxiety I couldn’t shake.

A buzz in my bones. A lump caught in my throat. Was that almost a panic attack today? I couldn’t tell if it was familiar or new. Same echo, different taste.

I wish I could untangle it with logic—but the threads slip through my fingers.

Anxiety #1: My boss called Saturday morning. I know I was right. Still, I dread what tomorrow’s sunrise brings—with her voice on the other end.

Anxiety #2: Four months to write a thesis. My heart thunders at the thought.

Anxiety #3: Birthdays. That hollow expectation. Pressure suffocates me, and I’m tempted to let it go entirely.

Anxiety #4: A frightening thought—so close to the edge. I fear the spiral. I fear how easily it could begin again.

Anxiety #5: My body becomes a map of consciousness. Every shape, every movement feels alive under the lens of my mind’s stare.

Anxiety #6: Loneliness—I notice it as much as the air around me.

Anxiety #7: The future—a bruised sky overhead, promising storms to come: work, place, purpose—undefined.

Anxiety #8: The fact that there are eight reasons. Eight tethers pulling me apart.

I wonder—can I exist between them without breaking?

Diary Entry 22.09.2022

[nottheoneoftroy]

Performing autopsies on conversations that died lifetimes ago.

Digging through words like bones,

searching for the moment they stopped breathing truth.

I reread it all— as if proof could soften the blow,

as if certainty might clear the fog

of a hope I now know was misplaced.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I’ve learned to carry silence like a second skin— worn thin in places, threadbare where your name used to echo.

I watch time fold over itself in the shape of all the things we never said, and I hold them close like an old letter I never had the courage to send.

And still, there it is— the one flicker left untouched— quietly blazing behind my ribs, where no wish could reach it.

[nottheoneoftroy]

Lately, I keep telling everyone I just need sleep.

They nod—offer remedies, warm tea, quieter nights.

But no one really asks what kind of tired this is.

It’s not my body that’s aching. It’s the ache of knowing that the only place I still find you— is somewhere between the blur of a dream and the softness of not-yet-awake.

[nottheoneoftroy]

It’s been years since I last held a landline to my ear—

but somehow, you brought back the static. The click. The quiet that follows when the connection breaks.

We both stayed where we were. Unmoved. Unspoken.

I called it pride. Maybe it was just the last shred of self-preservation. And you— You never told me what yours was.

[nottheoneoftroy]

There’s a cruelty in how dreams linger too close to waking life And we're stuck leaving doors slightly ajar for footsteps we’ll never hear again.

You were a daydream I mistook for something I could hold onto

[nottheoneoftroy]

It was inside a lime-green car that I first felt the weight of understanding shift gently off my shoulders. Where I cracked open, quiet and soft, like a secret whispered into a headrest.

That same car— where love surprised me again, this time wearing a new face, one I wasn't sure I deserved to see.

I cried there too. Not just for endings, but for what was released on the way to them.

Then the frame cuts— another car, another version of an “us” Black, of course. Like it already knew the script. Like the paint had already read the last scene.

Its license plate, a cruel coincidence. The kind that makes you believe the universe is fluent in irony.

Three years since I earned the right to drive. Still, I hesitate behind the wheel — as if steering clear of every road that has ever driven me into grief.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I’ve started slipping down your list— from urgent to optional, then to whatever gets lost between skipped meals and unread notifications.

And still, I write reminders on paper scraps and palms, trying to remember everything I’m afraid of losing.

[nottheoneoftroy]

My feelings and my thoughts are a mix of literature, and music, and cinema.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I never liked yellow. Never understood how people saw joy in something that burned so loud.

I should’ve known better the day I picked those flowers— yellow, of all colors—smiling at your name lighting up my screen.

As if the universe had waited for this moment, to let the color I’d always avoided wrap itself around me and sting.

It wasn’t a warning. It was the curse blooming gently in my hands.

[nottheoneoftroy]

deadlines or dead lines—resurrecting the obviously dead

You left before the bruises that signalled you were there did.

And if you find any shards in your backseat, they’re probably pieces of my shattered backbone.

The one that now won’t help me stand tall before falling. Won’t help catching myself wanting to tell you things. Small, daily details that some days back would throw us in the laughter hysteria.

Do you remember how you said you wanted to reach the end? How your words lined up the future—a future, yet now that finish line has a very different shape. The ribbon that signals it now looks more like a cage keeping me hostage to feelings that make the space more crowded than intended.

You turned this into a game, and I’m losing (to) you, reading tea leaves and following breadcrumbs that I now doubt were left there consciously.

Time has a funny way of slipping into every situation. Why and when else would I be counting down the 10 minutes it usually takes you to pop on my screen after I hit the “I need attention” button?

[nottheoneoftroy]

[...] Reading tea leaves and following breadcrumbs that I now doubt were left there consciously.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I wanted to drown in you, and maybe all you needed was to test the waters. That’s why when the riptide came, it only took me with it.

Did the impending dawn know that with its coming, it sealed our fate?

[nottheoneoftroy]

I can see them. Our shadows, two silhouettes with frayed edges, dancing on parallel planes.

—And the vision is clear now.

[nottheoneoftroy]

And I’m, for once, captive of the plot twist I always hated. Waking up from a dream, shattering a normalcy that was real just seconds ago.

— A normalcy that I let myself believe you could give me.

[nottheoneoftroy]

I hid from the moon, as if it wasn't there; and its fullness would never come back around to chase me.