A Mind That Never Sleeps

My Dear Stranger,

I used to carry a feeling I couldn’t name.

People called it anxiety.

Others said I was broken. A mess.

But to me, it felt like a quiet malfunction,

my heart, my body, my mind moving on different frequencies,

never quite meeting in the middle.

A living paradox, I said.

I try.

I really do.

I make plans. I say yes.

I show up with a smile rehearsed in the mirror.

Yet somewhere between agreeing and the moment itself,

I secretly hope they’ll cancel.

And when they do, relief washes over me,

My chest finally loosens,

My breath finds its way back.

As there was a heavy weight lifted from my chest.

But when they don’t,

panic quietly takes over. Intense.

My mind starts racing,

searching for an exit,

inventing reasons,

looking for an excuse I can hold onto—

something that sounds reasonable,

something that makes sense,

something that lets me stay away without being questioned.

Confusion attacks from every direction.

I want to be there.

I don’t want to be there.

Both feelings arrive at the same time, and I am left frozen between them.

But then, later, the guilt takes over,

then longing, then the heavy ache of missing out.

It’s so exhausting to have this constant contradiction.

My Dear Stranger,

I do want connection,

But I also crave disappearance.

I don't want to be alone,

Yet solitude feels safer than being seen halfway.

Sometimes my mind feels like it’s slipping away,

thoughts colliding, voices overlapping,

all demanding to be heard at once.

No pause. No off switch.

Maybe I am hard to deal with.

Maybe that’s why people eventually leave,

because they don’t know how to hold someone whose inner world never truly sleeps.

My Dear Stranger,

No one knows what it’s like to lie awake while the world rests,

to feel the night grow louder as everything else goes silent.

When streets are empty, lights are off,

and the darkness feels too honest. Drowning.

That’s when the noise comes.

Thoughts shouting over each other,

memories replaying without permission, guilt from the past, any mistakes, missing opportunities,

questions with no answers pacing back and forth in my head.

Silence became my closest companion, and yet my most dangerous enemy.

My Dear Stranger,

All the damn time, I try to quiet it.

And all the damn time, it refuses.

So I scream,

not with sound, not with a voice anyone can hear.

It’s the kind of scream that stays trapped inside,

the kind that slips through the smallest cracks in my heart,

leaking slowly, quietly, until it fills every space.

A scream made of unspoken pain,

of words that were never allowed to be said,

of everything I carry but never show,

No one hears it.

No one sees it.

But it’s there—

voicing every hurt I never learned how to say out loud.

So I ask myself the same questions, over and over:

What’s wrong with me?

Am I wired incorrectly?

Is something missing inside me,

Or is there something more?

Am I that broken? a failed product?

My Dear Stranger,

I've grown a lot over the last 6 years.

I understand now.

Maybe this isn’t brokenness.

Maybe this is depth without a map.

Sensitivity without translation.

A soul tuned to a frequency most people never hear.

And if you’re out there,

feel this same chaos,

this same push and pull,

this same loneliness in a crowded world,

I want you to know this,

Be strong. Not the loud kind. The staying kind.

Believe that everything will be okay, even when the night feels endless.

Believe that light has a way of finding its way through cracks.

It found me. Quietly. Gently.

At my lowest time, it reached in and held what I thought was unfixable.

And one day, I hope,

It will find you, too.

Your stranger,

Vie