you can strangely wake up from a dream and know, with complete certainty, that something happened, not that it happened in the world, you know you’re awake, you know you’re in your room, that it is morning, that the person you were speaking to isn’t standing somewhere outside your door, you can usually tell yourself that it was only a dream, but still, for a few seconds, it can sit inside your mind with the weight of a memory, and what interests me isn’t really that dreams can be strange, it’s that the brain can make something that never happened feel like something you remember, something that feels real. there is a distinction in what we mean when we call something “real”, it can mean something that happened, something that occurred in the external world, it can mean remembering something, your brain reconstructing information about an experience, and then there is something else entirely, the feeling of remembering something, your brain producing a subjective sense of familiarity, recollection, and certainty, and none of these are necessarily the same, you can have a very strong feeling of remembering something without the remembered event being accurate, and i think that is what makes this so unsettling.

your brain is constantly sorting experiences by their source, even when you aren’t aware that you’re doing it, did you actually hear someone say that, or did you imagine them saying it, did you read this somewhere, or did someone tell you, did you actually experience this, or did you think about experiencing it, did you remember this, or did you dream it, this is part of what psychologists call source monitoring, with reality monitoring referring more specifically to the distinction between internally generated information and information that came from the outside world, your brain doesn’t only need to remember information, it also needs to keep track of where that information came from, otherwise you could remember a sentence without remembering whether you heard it from someone, read it somewhere, imagined it, or dreamed it, source monitoring is the broader question of where remembered information came from, while reality monitoring is more specifically about distinguishing something that was experienced externally from something that was generated internally, like an imagined event, and most of the time you don’t consciously perform this little investigation, you simply know, you know the difference between remembering your friend telling you something yesterday and imagining your friend telling you something while you were lying in bed, or at least, you usually do.

your brain doesn’t attach a perfect little label to every thought saying this happened or this didn’t, instead, it uses characteristics of the experience itself as clues, sensory details, context, spatial information, the feeling of having actually been somewhere, the circumstances surrounding the experience, a memory of actually being at the beach might contain the sound of the water, the feeling of the sand, where you were sitting, who was beside you, what happened before you left, an imagined version of the same thing might contain some of those details too, but these aren’t perfect markers, they’re clues, and sometimes the information about where something came from becomes less clear than the information itself, you can remember a sentence without remembering who said it, you can remember an idea without remembering where you learned it, you can remember a scene without remembering whether you experienced it, imagined it, saw it in a movie, heard someone describe it, or dreamed it, the source can become blurry while the experience remains, and that is where dreams become interesting, because a dream is, in a very real sense, an internally generated experience.

during dreaming, particularly during REM sleep, the brain can produce experiences filled with visual scenes, sounds, conversations, people, locations, emotions, bodily sensations, and narratives, and you are inside of it, none of this requires the brain to create a perfect replica of reality, it only has to create an experience convincing enough for you to inhabit it, and this is where i find ideas about predictive processing interesting, one influential way of thinking about the brain is that it doesn’t simply receive the world passively, it constantly makes predictions about what is happening and updates those predictions using incoming information, so we tend to imagine perception as the world happens and then we see it, when in reality perception is much more complicated, the brain is constantly interpreting sensory information using what it already expects, knows, and predicts, and during a dream, the balance between internal generation and external sensory information changes dramatically, the outside world becomes quieter, there is much less sensory information coming in to constrain the experience, so internally generated activity can play a much larger role in what you experience.

i don’t mean that the brain simply “makes things up” while you’re asleep, and i don’t mean that waking reality is secretly a dream, i mean something smaller and, to me, stranger, our experience of the world has always been something our brains construct, we all experience different sensory experiences, even when we’re looking at the same movie, but with a movie you know that you are watching something, there is an external anchor reminding you that the story is happening somewhere else, during a dream, that anchor is largely absent, you aren’t watching the dream, you are in it, the dream becomes the environment, and for however long you’re inside it, that experience is enough.

this becomes even stranger when you think about memory, because remembering is reconstructive, when you remember something, your brain is rebuilding an experience from information that has been stored, together with context, associations, emotions, expectations, and sometimes information that entered your mind after the original event, this is why memories can change, it’s why two people can remember the same event differently, and it’s why someone can be completely sincere and completely certain about a detail that wasn’t actually the way they remember it, something about that is particularly uncomfortable because we usually treat the feeling of certainty as if it were a form of evidence, i remember it so clearly, therefore it must have happened exactly like that, but confidence and accuracy aren’t the same thing, a memory can feel incredibly real while still being reconstructed, and suddenly the distinction between a dream and a memory becomes less about one being imaginary and the other being a perfect record, neither is a perfect record, one is an experience generated during sleep, while the other is an experience reconstructed during waking life, and your brain has to figure out which is which.

the feeling of remembering is an odd thing, sometimes you don’t remember why you know something, you just know it, you notice the feeling of knowing it before you can explain where that feeling came from, the feeling itself is real, but the explanation for it can be wrong, déjà vu is one of the strangest examples of this, you can experience an overwhelming sense of familiarity while simultaneously knowing that the situation is new, there is even a related phenomenon called déjà rêvé, or “already dreamed”, where someone experiences a feeling that a current moment has appeared in a previous dream, and i think the ordinary explanation is stranger than a possible supernatural explanation, your brain can produce the feeling of familiarity without giving you a reliable account of where that familiarity came from, which means that this feels familiar and this happened before are two completely different statements, we just experience them as though they belong together.

i find dreaming about someone you’ve never met particularly difficult to explain as simply “weird”, because you don’t just see an unfamiliar face, you know them, you have history, you know how they speak, you know what they mean when they don’t say anything, you know what it feels like to be around them, sometimes you even wake up with an emotional attachment to them, and then there is nowhere to put that feeling, there is no photograph to look at, no real memory to return to, no message to send, the relationship existed entirely inside an experience your brain generated, and yet the emotion you felt during it wasn’t imaginary in the same sense, the event was imagined, the emotion was experienced, if you dream that someone breaks your heart, the heartbreak isn’t happening to a fictional character while you watch from outside, you are the one experiencing it, your body doesn’t need a real external event before it can respond emotionally to an internally generated experience, which means you can wake up grieving something that never happened, you can miss someone who only existed for six hours of sleep, and you can spend the morning carrying an emotion whose original story has already disappeared.

dreams are incredibly fragile, you can wake up knowing that something enormous just happened and then watch it disappear from your mind piece by piece, there was a house, someone was there, you were trying to get somewhere, you were happy, you were terrified, you loved someone, and then the details are gone, sometimes the narrative disappears but the emotion remains, you don’t remember what happened, you just wake up sad, and now your conscious mind has a feeling without its explanation, i think this is one of the strangest things about dreams, because we tend to think that an emotion needs a story, why are you sad, because this happened, but sometimes the story isn’t available anymore, the feeling is, and maybe that is partly because the memory of an experience and the emotional response to it aren’t the same thing, you can lose access to the details of something without losing every trace of how your brain responded to it, which means there are mornings when i know how i feel before i know why, sometimes the dream is gone, but something from it has stayed behind.

there isn’t one universally accepted answer to why we dream, there are several theories, and i actually like that there isn’t a single neat explanation, the activation-synthesis hypothesis, associated with Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, proposed that dreams could involve the brain interpreting internally generated activity during REM sleep and constructing a narrative from it, other research has connected dreaming with memory processing and consolidation, while the continuity hypothesis suggests that dreams can reflect concerns, emotions, relationships, and experiences from waking life, there are also theories focused on emotional processing, simulation, and the way the brain integrates information during sleep, none of these completely explains every dream, and maybe that’s worth preserving, because the moment we find one explanation for every dream, we lose some of the interesting uncertainty, what we do know is that sleep is deeply involved in memory, and dreams can incorporate fragments of waking life, a person you saw earlier, a conversation you had, a place you visited, something you were worried about, something you wanted, something you haven’t consciously thought about in years, the brain takes pieces of experience and rearranges them, and then, sometimes, it gives you the strangest possible version of yourself.

there are also experiences like false awakenings, where you dream that you’ve woken up even though you’re still asleep, you can dream that you’re in your own bedroom, you can get out of bed, you can check your phone, you can continue your morning, everything can feel completely ordinary, and then you wake up, really wake up, and i think there is something eerie about how easily the brain can reproduce something ordinary, it doesn’t need monsters to scare you, it doesn’t need a haunted house or a strange face in the corner of the room, it can give you your own bedroom, your own bed, your ordinary morning, and still keep it strange, because the room isn’t the unsettling part, the fact that your brain can make the room is.

potentially i’ve been approaching the question backwards, i started with why can dreams feel like memories, but maybe the first question should have been what makes a memory real in the first place? is it because the event actually happened, is it because you can picture it, because you remember where you were, because you remember how you felt, because you’re certain, because someone else remembers it too, because there is a photograph, none of those answers are completely sufficient on their own, you can forget something that happened, you can remember something incorrectly, you can feel certain about something that isn’t true, you can dream something and wake up carrying it like a memory, you can remember the emotion of an experience after forgetting almost everything else about it.

so maybe memory isn’t really a place where the past is stored, maybe it is a place where the past is continually rebuilt, not a photograph, something closer to a reconstruction, sometimes accurate, sometimes incomplete, sometimes altered by everything that happened afterward, and dreams make this even stranger because they show us how convincing an internally generated experience can become, your brain can create a world and let you live inside it, then you wake up and carry pieces of that world into another one, you can remember the person, you can remember the room, you can remember the feeling, and for a moment, the only thing separating this happened from i dreamed this is a distinction your brain has to make for you.

most of the time, it does, we don’t notice, we wake up, we get dressed, we check our phones, we continue with our lives, we trust our memories, we trust our perception, we trust the feeling that tells us where something came from, but every once in a while, something slips through, you wake up from a dream and for a few seconds you don’t know whether you’re remembering something or remembering a dream, you miss someone who was never there, you recognize a place you’ve never been, you feel an emotion whose story has already disappeared, and suddenly you notice something you normally don’t have to think about, your brain is not simply recording your experience, it is creating an experience of it.

and maybe that’s why dreams bother me more the more i learn about them, not because they aren’t real, but because they make me question what i mean when i call something real, a dream can feel like a memory, a memory can be reconstructed, an imagined thing can feel familiar, an emotion can remain after the story that caused it is gone, and still, every morning, we wake up and trust the world waiting for us, maybe the unsettling question was never whether dreams can feel real, maybe it was always this, if reality is something our brains have to construct before we can experience it, then what exactly are we trusting when we say, this happened?

I light candles when I’m journaling, it lighting up the page and my face makes it easier to write openly. Maybe the light revealing the letters more clearly and my face more honestly creates a place where I feel comfortable writing my deepest secrets. The same goes for reading, or relaxing, or when I feel lonely, or when something just doesn’t feel right.

Oddly I don’t necessarily have to light a candle to see the letters or my face more clearly, or to read. I don’t need a candle with cinnamon and vanilla being lit to connect myself, yet I feel incomplete without it.

I never truly understood why the candle mattered at all, or what about it made my room feel more like my room. The closest and simplest answer I found was because it was a ritual, it was because I ritualized the behavior.

A ritual doesn’t necessarily have to be religious, it can just be a sequence that has a symbolic or emotional meaning, and it still counts if it has it only for you.

The thing about this candle ritual is that it doesn’t matter because it possesses some magical power, it simply just brings more predictability, it makes the upcoming minutes more certain. You know what happens next. You will light a candle, open your journal, make some tea or coffee just to keep company, and write until you feel like the thought is outside your head.

This is what feels like control. It makes you perceive the feeling of control, which ends up in emotionally regulating your mind.

When I feel disconnected from myself, being able to light that candle and then knowing what is coming, creates a sense of control that gives me direction, particularly with the uncertainty brought by what caused the disconnection. The stability this brings is something that humans crave everyday, it is what rituals always existed as.

The candle ritual isn’t even only this, it is a whole sensory experience itself. The candle has a particular scent, and a specific way that it creates a warm light. It has a small flame moving, sometimes getting too strong that it creates a moment of fear. It has a heat that gently touches your skin and everything near it. It changes the way things look with how it plays with the shadows and it creates the feeling of sitting there still while the flame burns.

When this becomes something reoccurring, this whole ritual becomes associated with certain emotional states.

The most obvious door for memory here opens with the key of scent. Scents can be particularly effective retrieval cues for autobiographical memories. The studies done on them found that memories cued by scent differs from memories triggered by words or images. They are more detailed and emotionally stronger when it comes to returning to that memory.

However, this doesn’t mean that scents always mean uniquely emotional memory. With newer research, the idea that memories associated with scents are more emotional compared to other senses were challenged. This created the conclusion that memories presented with a scent cue wasn’t older or more emotional, the special emotional quality may just come from the situation itself rather than scent automatically making a memory more emotional.

Scents can be unusually powerful autobiographical cues, but their effect depends on the associations people have formed with them and on the context of the memory.

The candle doesn’t have to remind you of a specific place as well. My favorite candle smells like cinnamon and vanilla, but I don’t think about where I light it. I don’t say that it smells like my room. I genuinely just think about how I reach to light it every time I want to journal. This is when the scent acquires a new autobiographical association.

The candle doesn’t have to remind an old memory, it can become a new memory context.

When it comes to scent being connected to memory, we tend to think that it reminds us of the past. And yes, the scent can carry past to the present and remind you of something that already happened. Yet, it also can hint the future while still experiencing the present. This is what happens when you know what you’re going to do when you light that candle. You are not just using sensory cues to remember your past, but you are creating future memory cues in the present.

The candle also creates a certain context through the environment. Physical environment can affect memory, but the effect depends more on the circumstances. When I think about myself journaling every single night I think about the same desk, same notebook, same chair, same candle, same lightning, even the same posture I am physically in.

None of these are necessarily the important cue, but they create a context. They create the context of where you think, where you write, where you are alone with yourself.

Then comes the light, which changes the visual environment completely. The light is warmer, smaller, surrounded by darkness while it is constantly moving. It is different from the big light, it is more intimate.

The dark ink and illuminated paper can change the whole visual experience and make it become a part of the sensory scene. The candle doesn’t simply change the way the words look, it changes the experience of writing them.

The familiarity of this sensory experience makes me return to myself. Whenever I am close to a panic attack, or feeling extremely dissociated, my therapist told me to focus on my senses to return back to the moment. I think the candle does the same. It creates this multi sensory experience that is so familiar with being one with myself that it makes me return to who I am.

I light the candle to feel like myself, but the repeated use of the candle makes the candle itself a part of what defines feeling myself. I use the ritual because it feels like me, and eventually, it feels like me because I used it so many times. This makes it circular and fascinating.

The candle becomes directed to journaling, and solitude, and reflection, and familiarity, and eventually becomes directed to the self, myself, being who I am.

We often think of “feeling like ourselves” as something that happens internally, as though the self is a stable object waiting somewhere inside us. But perhaps recognition of the self is partly contextual. We surround ourselves with familiar sensory patterns, repeat familiar actions, occupy familiar spaces, and eventually those patterns become coordinates by which we locate ourselves.

Maybe we don’t light candles because we need the candle, I can say that I can live without a candle with the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. But I still light it, I make it the thing that connects me to myself, and become furious whenever I can’t light it. So maybe we light them because certain small rituals have become parts of ourselves and the candle is one of them.

Maybe I don’t light the candle because it makes me feel like myself. Maybe, after lighting it enough times, I have taught myself that this is what myself feels like.

The one living flower that had once been given to me by a person so alive had become flat enough to fit between two pages of a book. I remember how it had once been so beautifully alive, growing, existing in its own small world for its own short period of time. I put it in a vase and let the whole room be possessed by its smell. When it was time I made the choice to preserve it, even though that meant it was never going to be alive again. Now it is still the same flower, only much more flattened.

This is preservation, but I don’t think we always realize what we are trying to preserve when we feel the urge to do so.

A living flower moves through time, while the pressed one keeps the moment when the movement had stopped for good.

Before pressed flowers became associated with old books, children’s games in the garden, and the things kept in diaries, they were used for recording the moment rather than being a purely sentimental experience.

When they first came up with the idea of pressing and drying plants on paper to make plants that could be studied outside the time frame they had originated in. In a way, it was an attempt to make the plants live outside of their time.

A flower, as it is, only allows for a narrow window of observation before it fades forever. Pressing flowers makes their few precious days stretch into years, even centuries. The pressed flower no longer moves through time but exists as a capsule of time made out of a dead plant.

The first reason humans pressed flowers was to defeat time, to save the moment time, and to make it last longer than it was supposed to.

Yet, to preserve something is to admit that it will not stay as it is, that you will not be able to keep it with you forever. You cannot preserve a living flower, you can only preserve the shape of a flower that will always be dead. Perhaps some of its color will stay with you, along with the form, but its existence is only a memory now. It has transformed, died, and you can only keep the evidence of its living with you. You cannot preserve the growth of the flower, its beauty, its fragrance, the way it bent to the light, the way it opened up to the morning sun. You can only save the remains of it, the things that outlived the flower.

The pressed flower becomes both the evidence of life and the evidence of the absence of life as soon as it stops being the one existing.

Maybe this is why pressed flowers often invoke a sense of melancholy even in their beauty. It is the beauty of something that is not there, preserved for your observation precisely because it is not there anymore.

Human memory is in some ways deeply similar to this quality of a pressed flower. Not because it is similar to the preservation of the flower, but because it demands a similar effort at preservation by being highly selective.

The mind does not preserve the moments as they were, but rather compresses them, extracting some elements and forgetting others, losing the context while being obsessively protective of a few random details.

We do not remember the relationships as a whole, the entire period of time when they lasted, every conversation, every ordinary day that made up that period, with all its uniqueness. We remember that one afternoon, that one conversation, that one smile, that one song, that one sentence, that one flower. We remember the details, the things that were random, the things that stood out. We take those few things that somehow stuck with us and we compress everything else into them, making those random details into the entire world. We make objects into memories, into moments, into people, into feelings. We make the things that were, by necessity, flat into the entire world.

The thing we call the memory is, in fact, pressed like a flower, flattened and reconstructed in order to be retained. Neither the memory nor the pressed flower is original, but each of them manages to represent the feeling of something that was.

There is one crucial difference, however, and it is that in order to preserve something, you have to be willing to accept a particular perspective on it. When you press a flower, you do not press its entire life, but rather, you press the moment when the flower was in a particular state. You press the flower in a particular place, on a particular day, at a particular stage of its life. Plants studied even require extensive notes to be made on them since the information that is lost when the plant is pressed needs to be somehow preserved as well. The place where it was found, the day, the hour, the person who found it, the conditions of the habitat, the characteristics that the plant had at the time, all of it needs to be written down because it is no longer there.

There is actual psychological research on cherished objects and memorabilia that suggests that people value objects mostly for their ability to trigger memories rather than for their meaning, and in some cases, they might even act as reconstructive devices for the person who possesses them. At that point, the object no longer contains the memory that it supposedly contains, but rather triggers a different one that the object was not necessarily supposed to trigger. The flower is not the memory of the person or the place or the moment, but it is a physical object that can contain the memory of a person, a place, and a moment.

That is why it is often so hard to get rid of an object that objectively has no meaning. The object has meaning because it has taken on a second identity as the carrier of the memory, the feeling, the meaning. We might say the same things about photographs, but a photograph can preserve a face without changing the face itself. A pressed flower requires physical transformation by not merely recording the flower but changing it with the intent to preserve it. It is not wanting to disappear and so it makes sure it will never be the same again. Perhaps preservation is an act of possession. You can preserve something because you love it, but you may also love it because you want to possess it.

A flower is beautiful because it is fleeting, because it only blooms for a moment, because it only lives once. The beauty is in the knowledge that it will not last. We preserve it in order to remove this quality from it, in order to make it last longer than it is supposed to. And it is the same with moments. We photograph sunsets because they are over, we record people because they change, we save voices because they will become different, we keep objects because they will no longer be there. Most things we write are meant to be preserved so that they will not be forgotten, most art is meant to outlive its creator so that it will never really die, and so pressing a flower is only one small way in which we attempt to make things last forever. It is not always an attempt to fight time, but rather accept it. Perhaps we preserve things because we know they will not last, and so we want to keep as much of them as we can before they disappear for good. It is not really the fear of losing something that makes us preserve it, but the knowledge that it will inevitably be lost, and the desire to keep as much of it as we can before it is too late.

Maybe that is why we preserve things at all. Perhaps it is not the object that we want to save, but rather the relationship we had with it. A photograph does not really preserve a childhood, but it can be enough to remind us of it. A letter does not really preserve a person, but it can be enough to remember them by. A flower does not really preserve a summer, but it can be enough to recreate it in our minds.

And maybe, just maybe, we do not really want to preserve the moment, but rather the self that experienced it. We want to remember who we were because that person is gone too, just like the flower is gone. The person who pressed the flower and the person who found it are not the same, just like the flower that was pressed and the one that was found are not the same. The flower remained in the book, but I did not remain in the place where I put it.

That is the most strange thing about preservation. It is that the thing we save can often remain the same while we become different. The flower did not stay alive, it did not stay the same, it simply stayed long enough to find me again.

And that is all preservation can really give us. Not the promise that something will stay, only the hope that something of it will.

i’ve never imagined writing in a notebook at night, or on the wall beside me, or in the margins of the book resting on my bedside table. i journaled. i wrote in books. i filled page after page with my own handwriting. but somehow, i never imagined those. only the ceiling. i’ve never really wondered why.

the strange thing is, i don’t even look at it. my eyes don’t follow my finger. i don’t watch the letters appear or disappear. i couldn’t tell you where i’m looking. maybe at my knees. maybe nowhere at all. i don’t think i’m trying to see the handwriting. i’m trying to think it. the ceiling only exists inside my mind. maybe that’s why it had to become the place i write. not because it’s empty, but because nothing else can exist there except me.

the words themselves don’t even matter. half an hour later i almost never remember what i wrote. sometimes i don’t even remember while i’m writing it. the meaning doesn’t comfort me. the image does. my own handwriting slowly appearing before me, the curves i know without thinking, recognizing the shape of the letters before they even exist.

seeing someone’s handwriting has always felt different, almost unbearably intimate. a typed sentence could belong to anyone. handwriting refuses to. it carries the body with it. the weight of a wrist resting on paper, a hesitation, a heavier stroke, a letter written too quickly because the hand wanted to keep up with the thought. before it becomes language, it’s movement. every curve reveals something you never chose consciously. you don’t just read handwriting. you encounter a person through it.

i’ve realized i protect my handwriting.

when i’m writing about something i don’t feel connected to, i type it. biology lives on my laptop. school notes become files and folders. but the things that feel like they’re part of me, the things i can’t explain without feeling them first, those always become handwriting. maybe that’s why i reach for it when i can’t reach myself. maybe handwriting isn’t just the way i write. maybe it’s the place i keep the parts of me i don’t want the world to touch.

when i can’t quite recognize myself emotionally, i recognize the way i make an “a.” the way my “g” falls below the line. the pressure i imagine placing onto a page that isn’t even there. somehow that feels more convincing than my own thoughts. it’s as if my hand remembers me before my mind does.

if the words are invisible, they could look like anything. they could arrive in perfect typeface, all sharp edges and equal spacing. they could belong to someone else entirely. but they never do. they always lean the way mine lean. they carry the same loops, the same hurried connections between letters, the same tiny habits my hand has repeated for years without asking permission.

there’s something strangely human about wanting proof that we’ve passed through a moment. we underline books we’ll never open again. we leave notes in margins. we fold letters into drawers. we keep grocery lists long after we’ve bought everything on them. we scatter little pieces of ourselves through the world, as though existing becomes easier to believe once it leaves a mark. maybe that’s why i keep writing on the ceiling. maybe i’m trying to leave a trace somewhere that can never hold one.

when i was little, i used to write on my mother's leg while she was putting me to sleep. not with a pen, just with the tip of my finger. i don’t remember the words. i don’t even know if there were words. maybe i was drawing letters i couldn’t spell yet. maybe i was writing stories. maybe i was only tracing the movement of handwriting because i liked the feeling of making it.

she never knew what i was writing. most of the time she probably didn’t even know i was writing at all. looking back, i don’t think i wanted her to. if i had, i would’ve written her a letter. or asked her to guess the words. the point was never for the message to arrive.

i think i was trying to feel that she was there.

i remember the feeling of my finger against her skin more than i remember the words. i wasn’t waiting for her to understand what i wrote. i think i only wanted to know that she existed underneath my hand. that she was there. that she hadn’t disappeared while i closed my eyes. maybe the handwriting was only an excuse to keep touching someone i loved.

it’s strange how children invent rituals without realizing they’re inventing them. no one taught me to do that. i never questioned why i did it. my body simply decided this was what closeness looked like.

i’ve been thinking about the fact that neither ritual leaves anything behind. by the time my finger left my mother’s skin, there was nothing there. by the time i lift my hand from the ceiling, the words have already disappeared. maybe that’s why i never imagined writing in a notebook. notebooks belong to the world. they can be opened again. read again. found by someone else. the ceiling can’t. the ceiling exists only as long as i do. maybe i never wanted to preserve the words. maybe i only wanted to be alone with them. alone with myself. free to let them disappear without having to become anything.

now, years later, i don’t write on anyone’s skin. i write on the ceiling. i never read the words back. i never try to remember them. they disappear before i have the chance to. sometimes i think that’s the point. maybe i’ve never been attached to words as much as i’ve been attached to traces. invisible on my mother’s skin. invisible on my ceiling. maybe i’ve spent my whole life trying to leave traces that disappear before anyone else can find them, visible only to the person i was trying to reach.

sometimes i wonder if i’m repeating the same ritual i’ve always had. first, i wrote invisible words on someone i was afraid of losing. now i write invisible words for the person i’m afraid of losing.

myself.

During the day, they behave like quiet instruments of accuracy. You glance at them without thinking. You fix your hair. You notice your face. You leave. They do not ask for attention. They simply return what is already there, at least it seems to be like that.

But at night, the same mirror can feel like a different object entirely.

When room is dimmer, the light is uneven, your reflection takes a second longer to register. Your face looks slightly detached from you, as if it is not fully synchronized with your presence. If you stare long enough, something subtle begins to shift; not in the mirror, but in perception itself. The image stops feeling like a confirmation of who you are, and starts feeling like something closer to a question.

The mirror has not changed. But your relationship to it has.

When I started researching mirrors in the dark, I expected superstition. Stories about portals, spirits, warnings about covering mirrors at night or after death, just like what I found the first time I researched it. But what I found instead was something more unsettling. Not belief in mirrors, but instability in perception itself.

Because the most disturbing thing about mirrors is not that they show us something false. It is that they show us something constructed, and when something is constructed it is easier for it to breakdown.

In experimental psychology, there is a phenomenon known as the strange-face illusion. It has been studied most notably in experiments by Giovanni Caputo.

Participants are placed in a dim room and asked to stare at their own reflection for several minutes without moving their gaze. At first, nothing unusual happens. Then, gradually, the face begins to change. Not physically, but perceptually.

People report seeing distortions. The face seems to melt, shift, or fragment. Some see unfamiliar faces. Some see distorted versions of themselves. Some even report seeing entirely different identities layered over their own reflection.

What is crucial here is that the mirror does not change, but the brain does. A whole another thing becomes constructed.

When visual input is steady and under-stimulated, especially in low light, the brain begins to compensate. It fills in missing information. It amplifies noise. It begins to generate predictions of what should be there instead of what is actually there.

Perception, in other words, stops being passive, but becomes creative. When the light is not fully there, what you see becomes even more of an illusion. It slowly blends into your mind rather than what is actually there.

And what is most unsettling is this: under the right conditions, your own face becomes something your brain can no longer reliably reconstruct.

We tend to assume that vision works like recording. That light enters the eyes, forms an image, and is simply “seen.” But neuroscience suggests something very different. The brain does not receive reality. It builds it.

At every moment, it predicts what the world should look like based on memory, expectation, and context. It then compares that prediction to incoming sensory data and adjusts accordingly. What we experience as “seeing” is actually a negotiation between what is there and what the brain expects to be there.

This means that perception is always slightly ahead of reality, and always slightly detached from it.

Most of the time, this system works perfectly. But mirrors are unusual. They show a stable, unchanging version of yourself. And when the brain is forced to stare at a perfectly consistent image for too long, it loses some of its predictive flexibility. It stops updating in a normal rhythm. It begins to overcorrect.

What you call your face is suddenly no longer a fixed object. It becomes an interpretation.

During the day, mirrors are embedded in context. Light is strong. Movement is constant. The environment is rich with sensory information. Your reflection is just one detail among many.

At night, this balance collapses. The world becomes quieter. Visual input weakens. Attention narrows. The mirror becomes one of the only stable sources of visual structure in the room. And so it becomes amplified.

Not physically, but psychologically, because you are no longer looking at a reflection among many things. You are looking at a reflection as the only anchored object in perception.

This shift alone can alter emotional experience. But there is something deeper happening too: reduced lighting increases ambiguity. And the brain reacts strongly to ambiguity in human faces.

A face that is slightly unclear is not neutral. It is unstable. And instability is interpreted by the brain as meaningful, even when it is not.

There is another strange element to mirrors in darkness: timing. In normal conditions, your reflection updates instantly. Movement is mirrored without delay. Identity feels continuous.

But in dim light, recognition can feel slightly delayed. Not literally, but subjectively. The brain takes longer to “resolve” what it is seeing.

And in that delay, something opens. A gap between seeing and recognizing.

In that gap, the face becomes less like “you” and more like “a human-shaped pattern. This is where the experience begins to shift from visual to existential. Because what you are witnessing is not your face changing. It is your recognition of it becoming less certain.

Across cultures, mirrors have never been treated as neutral objects. They have been covered after death in many traditions. They have been associated with souls, doubles, and thresholds between worlds. They have been used in divination practices, where reflection becomes a method of accessing hidden knowledge.

In folklore, mirrors are often treated as unstable boundaries: objects that do not simply reflect reality but hold the potential to distort it. What is interesting is not whether these beliefs are “true” in a literal sense. It is that they emerge repeatedly across unrelated cultures. As if humans intuitively sense something unusual about reflection itself. Not supernatural, but perceptual.

A mirror is one of the only objects that shows us ourselves as if we are outside of ourselves. That alone is enough to destabilize how identity is normally experienced.

A mirror does not simply show a face. It produces a second version of you that exists outside your body. A version that moves when you move, but is not you. This creates a subtle split in perception. You become both subject and object at once.

Most of the time, this split is manageable. But in moments of low light, stillness, or prolonged attention, it becomes more visible.

And when it becomes visible, it can feel unsettling, not because something new has appeared, but because something familiar has been stripped of its automatic certainty.

Perhaps mirrors in the dark are not frightening because they hide something. Perhaps they are frightening because they remove distraction. They isolate perception until all that remains is the fragile act of recognition itself. And in that stripped-down state, the reflection stops being a simple image.

It becomes a reminder that what we call “seeing ourselves” is not passive at all. It is something the brain is constantly constructing, moment by moment, without ever fully telling us how. And maybe that is what unsettles us most.

Not that the mirror shows something unfamiliar. But that it shows how easily familiarity itself can dissolve.

A doll is one of the very few things that can comfort a child and unsettle an adult. Children carry these objects everywhere. They sleep beside them. Bring them on trips. Tell them secrets. Cry into them. Some children refuse to leave the house without them. The object becomes so important that losing it can feel like losing a part of themselves. To an adult, this attachment can seem irrational. The doll cannot speak. It cannot protect them. It cannot love them back. Yet it matters.

The same doll with the same expression, same eyes, same face, can end up forgotten in an attic, being abandoned, or feared. Nothing about the doll changed. Only the person looking at it did.

When psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott studied childhood attachment, he noticed that many children form deep relationships with specific objects. He called these objects “transitional objects.” They help a child navigate one of life's first painful realizations: that they are separate from the people who care for them. He mentioned the well-known fact that after a few months, infants of either sex become fond of playing with dolls, and that most mothers allow their infants some special object and expect them to become, as it were, addicted to such objects.

These help to identify the bridge between dependence and independence. A doll becomes a form of comfort to carry. A small piece of safety is placed inside a physical object.

The more I researched dolls, the more I realized they were never really about toys. They were about attachment. About the human need to place pieces of ourselves outside ourselves. Because attachment alone does not explain dolls. Children do not simply hold them. They transform them.

The doll receives a name. A birthday. A personality. Suddenly, it has fears, dreams, favorite colors, and friends. It becomes shy. Brave. Kind. Lonely. The object itself never changes. What changes is what we place inside it.

Humans naturally project emotions onto objects. The brain constantly searches for faces, personalities, and intentions. A doll becomes a blank canvas. Psychologists call this anthropomorphism: our tendency to attribute human qualities to non-human things. Humans do this constantly and unconsciously. We see faces in clouds. Personalities in cars. Emotions in computers. We apologize to tables after bumping into them and thank machines that cannot hear us. The human brain is obsessed with finding life.

Perhaps that is why dolls become so powerful. A doll arrives empty with no history, no memories, no thoughts. But then, someone fills it, and it evolves into something, someone that is whispered to, loved, trusted, kept. And at that moment, the doll, which was once only plastic, wood, or porcelain, becomes a vessel. Not because there is something inside it, but because there is something inside us, and they are connected.

The strange thing is that humans have been doing this for thousands of years.

Long before dolls were sold in toy stores, people were carving human figures from clay, bone, stone, and wood. Ancient cultures created dolls that were never intended for play. Some were placed in tombs. Some were used in rituals. Some represented gods. Some represented the dead. Again and again, across different cultures separated by oceans and centuries, humans returned to the same idea. The human shape. We kept recreating ourselves.

Perhaps because there is something deeply comforting about seeing ourselves reflected in the world. Or perhaps because we are terrified of disappearing. A photograph preserves a face, a diary preserves a voice, and a doll preserves a shape. All of them are attempts to leave evidence behind.

This becomes even stranger when we consider how often dolls appear in folklore.

Across cultures, dolls have been treated as substitutes for people. Protective objects. Spiritual vessels. Objects capable of carrying intentions, blessings, curses, prayers, fears. The details change depending on the culture, but the pattern remains.

Humans repeatedly imagine dolls as containing more than their material, as a person, as a presence, as something alive enough to matter.

Here, the question is not why people believed this. It is why so many people believed it. That is the side of dolls that unsettles us. A child often loves dolls, but adults often fear them. The perception transforms at some point. And this is where the uncanny valley appears.

In 1970, Roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed that as something becomes more human-like, our comfort with it increases, and as it becomes more human-like, our emotional response to it grows, until a certain point. After that point, it suddenly drops. The subtle imperfections trigger feelings of eeriness, revulsion, fear. A figure that is almost human can feel more disturbing than something clearly non-human.

Mori was not trying to explain dolls; he was thinking about robots. At a time when technology was advancing rapidly, people assumed that making robots increasingly human-like would naturally make people like them more.

Mori noticed that this wasn’t true. At first, a robot with eyes feels friendlier than a robot without eyes. A robot with a face feels more approachable than a machine made only of metal parts. But then something strange happens: at a certain point, increasing human resemblance stops helping. Instead of becoming more likable, the object suddenly becomes unsettling. Almost like people were reacting not to humanity itself but to imperfections in humanity. The closer something comes to being human, the more sensitive we become to anything that feels wrong.

The word “uncanny” itself has a fascinating history. Long before Mori, psychologists and philosophers were interested in a feeling that occurs when something is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The most famous exploration comes from Sigmund Freud and his essay The Uncanny. Freud argued that the uncanny emerges when something that should feel familiar suddenly becomes strange.

Not entirely strange, but partly strange. A reflection that looks wrong, a doll that appears alive, a wax figure mistaken for a person. Like a double, a copy, a repetition.

The uncanny exists in contradiction. It is not the unknown that frightens us. It is the almost-known. That is why dolls fit the concept so perfectly. A doll is familiar because it resembles a person. A doll is unfamiliar because it lacks personhood. The brain struggles to place it into a stable category.

One of the most compelling explanations for the uncanny valley is that it creates what cognitive scientists sometimes call category confusion.

Humans love categories. We organize reality through distinctions: alive or dead, human or object, self or other. Most things fit comfortably into one category. A chair is an object, a dog is alive, but a doll sits awkwardly between categories. It resembles a human but is not human; it appears alive but is not alive. The blur of the boundaries and categories blending into each other makes humans uncomfortable.

Many cultural fears revolve around this category collapse: ghosts are between life and death, zombies are between living and dead, dolls are between toy and human. The uncanny valley may be partly the feeling produced when a category begins to break apart.

One of the most popular scientific theories focuses on evolution. Human beings evolved as social animals, and recognizing faces was essential for survival. Recognizing emotions was essential for survival. Recognizing illness was essential for survival. Our brains became extraordinarily sensitive to tiny details in human appearance. A slight asymmetry or a subtle change in skin color, a strange eye movement, an unnatural smile.

Some researchers believe uncanny valley reactions occur because hyper-realistic dolls activate systems designed to detect abnormalities.

The brain notices that something is wrong, but it cannot always explain what is wrong; the warning signal remains.

If you research the uncanny valley long enough, you eventually discover that many people identify the eyes as the most disturbing feature. There is a reason for this. Humans are obsessed with eyes. From infancy, people pay extraordinary attention to gaze. We constantly monitor: where others are looking, what they are looking at, and whether they are looking at us. The eyes provide enormous amounts of social information. It shows emotion, attention, intention, and awareness. A doll has eyes, but no awareness; this creates the tension.

Your brain expects a mind behind the gaze, but none arrives. Many people describe the feeling of the dolls staring at them. Not because the doll actually is staring, but because the visual system automatically interprets eyes as evidence of consciousness. When consciousness is absent, something feels incomplete.

Mori believed movement intensifies uncanny valley effects. A still doll can be unsettling, but a moving doll can become deeply disturbing. This is because movement provides even more opportunities for imperfections. A human face moves with extraordinary complexity, with tiny muscle contractions occurring constantly, expressions blending into each other.

The problem is often not the appearance, but the motion. Humans are experts at detecting human movement, so even slight deviations become noticeable.

Many scholars believe the uncanny valley is closely tied to mortality. People usually describe corpses, wax figurines, and realistic dolls as uncanny. It is because they all resemble humans while lacking life. In this interpretation, uncanny figures remind us of a frightening possibility: A human body without a human presence. The face remains, but the person is gone. The uncanny experiences are not simply about artificiality. They are about confronting the boundary between life and death. They are about when the fragile nature of life is uncertain.

Another major theme connected to the uncanny is the idea of the double. Throughout literature, humans have always feared copies of themselves through the idea of doppelgängers, reflections, twins, clones. A doll functions as a miniature double. It resembles a person while remaining separate from them.

Freud believed doubles were particularly uncanny because they blur identity. If another version of you exists, then there is a place to question which one is the original self. The doll becomes frightening not because it is different, but because it is too similar.

One of the most fascinating questions is why children frequently adore dolls while adults are more likely to find them unsettling.

Part of the answer involves purpose. Children use dolls actively and tell stories while projecting emotions. This creates imaginary worlds in which the doll becomes integrated into play. However, adults often encounter dolls passively.

Eventually, every uncanny valley discussion reaches philosophy, because the deeper question is not: why are dolls creepy? It is what makes a human feel human?

We often assume we know, but then we encounter something that challenges the assumption. A realistic doll has eyes, skin, hair, and a face. Yet, it lacks something. And we don’t know what that something is. Consciousness? Awareness? Presence?

The uncanny valley forces us to confront how difficult it is to define humanity. We recognize when something is missing, yet we struggle to explain exactly what is absent.

That may be why the uncanny valley remains fascinating decades after Mori proposed it; it is not really a theory about robots. Or dolls. Or wax figures. It is a theory about the fragile border humans draw around personhood.

Perhaps that is why the uncanny valley remains fascinating decades after Mori proposed it. It is not really a theory about robots. Or dolls. Or wax figures. It is a theory about the fragile border humans draw around personhood.

For centuries, humans have searched for ways to recreate themselves. Through dolls, photographs, reflections, stories, portraits, characters, and now even artificial intelligence. Again and again, we return to the same desire: to create something in our own image.

And yet, every attempt eventually confronts the same problem. A doll can have eyes, but not awareness. A doll can have a face, but not a mind. A doll can resemble a person perfectly and still feel empty. The closer we come to recreating ourselves, the more we are forced to ask what exactly it is that makes us human in the first place.

Perhaps that is why dolls can feel both comforting and unsettling. They sit on the border between object and person, between familiarity and strangeness, between life and imitation. A child looks at a doll and sees a friend. An adult looks at the same doll and sees a question.

Maybe the discomfort comes from realizing how difficult that question is to answer, because when we look at a doll, we are not only looking at something that almost resembles a human. We are looking at a reminder that we still do not fully understand what a human is.

i thought it was a lie i made myself believe. i thought, if i am able to predict it, why am i not stopping it fully before he even reaches to that table. but i never knew, i never knew why i wasn’t able to. maybe it was the way of universe letting me understand that i may know things, understand them, but not stop them.

three years and a half ago i went to the cinema, not knowing it would be the last time for years, until i went back not too long ago. it was about a woman, she had cancer, she was strong, but she wasn’t able to beat the illness.

i went into the cinema expecting to understand her, focus to her, and watch her. instead i found myself watching her sister, the strong one who hold everything together and broke down alone when it happened.

i left the cinema before it fully ended, i needed to see how things ended, but i couldn't stay there for the whole time. something overwhelming was inside of me. i knew something would happen. in that moment when i was in that cinema, sitting at the row next to the exit, i knew that sister would be me. something would happen to my brother, not cancer, but something.

i ran to the exit, i cried my heart out. when everyone asked, i told them it was the movie. it was too emotional, i couldn’t take it. i knew how the story would end, i knew her story. what i didn’t knew was the feeling i would have. the strong urge to go next to my brother and make sure he was okay. that was what caught me off guard.

when i went home, i told my brother i watched a sad movie and hugged him. the day later, i told him i had a bad dream and hugged him until he fell asleep. i counted his breaths until he fell asleep. i don’t remember how many. i just remember making sure there would be another one. i didn’t even used the word nightmare, it was just a bad dream, it would pass. it didn’t.

when we went to the doctor because he had the flu, i begged the doctor to do more tests. not about the flu, about everything. she thought i had anxiety, she even prescribed me something for that, but she did the tests. she told me that she needed to do them anyway, just for a checkup.

i thought about that movie for days, i waited for the tests. when my mom cried my name a few days later, i knew. she told me. it was not cancer, but it was something else, something that wouldn’t go away. something that could take him from me.

my mother brought me to the dentist a few days later. she broke down there crying. when my mother was crying, no one tried to spare me, but they acted like it was something i wouldn’t understand. i already knew this would happen, i would hold it together like that sister in the movie.

for years i didn’t went back to the cinema. i couldn't. i would still be watching that one movie, crying, knowing something was about to happen. i would know it, but i wouldn’t be able to stop it. as how it happened since the day i was a sister.

i’m still at that cinema sometimes, in my bad dreams. i still go hug my brother, but now i know that it’s not the movie, it never was.

still, if i tell people i predicted it, they would look at me and laugh, what a silly girl. and maybe i am, maybe it is just a game my mind is playing. but i know, if i didn’t cried to the doctor that day to do more tests to the point i got prescribed something because i was too worried, they wouldn’t know for a long while, maybe it would be too late.

i don’t want to be stuck at that cinema forever. i don’t want my ending to be like that sister, i don’t want to break down on my own. i can hold him when he falls, but i can’t stop him from bumping to that table.

i don’t want to predict my own ending, i want to write my own, but it’s not mine to stop from happening.

i’m still at that cinema. maybe one day i will get out when i see that light in his eyes again without the blur. maybe one day i will be the one to just learn things.

i’m still at that cinema i avoided for years. not because of movies, but because somewhere in the dark, in room two, in a row i don’t remember which, but next to the exit. she hasn’t gone home yet.

when i went back years later, i looked for the seat near the exit before i looked at the screen. like she was still sitting there.

maybe i never predicted anything. maybe i was just a sister. maybe loving someone that much means spending years mistaking fear for intuition. i don’t know. what i know is that the lights came back on eventually. and one day i walked out of the cinema. not because the movie was over. because i finally understood that watching it harder would not change the ending.

still, a part of me is there. the light went on, but a part of me stayed there until the cinema was closed and everything was dark. room two, the row next to the exit. waiting for my own ending, hoping it will turn out the way i would write it.

i know that sounds strange, because technically it is still attached to my head, still growing from me, still carrying years of salt water, bad decisions, late night conversations, and chopping it off in the middle of the night. it still grows attached to my head, it belongs to me, and everything else that has happened to me, but underwater it becomes something i have no authority over. above water, hair behaves. it falls, it hangs from the body like a sentence ending exactly where it should. water ruins that.

you try to hold one strand and then seven others float beside it. people talk about memories as though they sit quietly in the rooms where we left them, but mine never do. mine drift. mine wander. mine show up in places they have no place to be. i will be standing in line for coffee, or rearranging my bookshelf all over again, or staring at a wall, and suddenly something i have not thought about in years brushes against me so lightly i almost mistake it for nothing at all. then i turn around and there it is, floating behind me, patient as ever.

there is a moment underwater when my hair spreads so far around me that it no longer looks like part of a body. it becomes a cloud, a stain, a dark bloom opening itself inside the water. i look at it and think of all the emotions i was certain had disappeared. every grief i thought i had swallowed. every humiliation. every love. every version of myself i assumed had died somewhere along the way. none of them disappeared. they simply changed shape. that might be the thing i fear most. not loss, but transformation, because transformation is harder to recognize than loss. when something dies, you know where to grieve it, but no one tells you what to do when it keeps living under another name, a different form, something you cannot quite recognize.

underwater, my hair twists itself into forms i have never seen before. knots appear where there were none. for a moment it looks beautiful, and then for a moment it looks frightening, and then i realize those are often the same thing. beauty has always had a habit of standing very close to fear.

there is something beautiful about standing beneath the surface and watching your own reflection come apart. there is something beautiful about becoming unrecognizable for a moment. there is something beautiful about looking at yourself and realizing you are not as fixed as you thought. but beauty is not always gentle.

sometimes beauty wraps itself around your throat. sometimes beauty makes you hold your breath. sometimes beauty looks exactly like drowning until you reach the surface and realize you survived it.

when i think about hair underwater, i do not really think about hair. i think about all the parts of myself that refuse to stay still. the feelings that expand the moment i stop watching them. the memories that drift into rooms before i do. the versions of me i keep trying to leave behind only to find them floating beside me years later, patient, unchanged, waiting for me to recognize them.

sometimes i find my hair tangled around my fingers when i am thinking, wrapped so tightly around them i do not remember twisting it there. sometimes i find it caught in my brush, folded into little knots that look too small to have once belonged to an entire head. but the only time i see my hair wet, unless i am underwater, is when it is stuck to the drain after a shower. it clings there, dark and flattened, as though the water tried to carry it away and failed. i always stare at it a little longer than necessary. it looks less like hair and more like evidence. like a memory halfway through leaving. like a version of myself that made it to the exit but could not fit through.

it reminds me of looking down underwater and watching my hair rise while i sink deeper. there is something cruel about that, the way one part of me seems desperate to reach the surface while the rest continues downward. maybe that is why the drain unsettles me.

something always ends up stuck somewhere. a strand of hair against cold metal. a memory caught beneath my ribs. me, suspended underwater, neither sinking fast enough nor rising back up, just hovering there between leaving and staying.

when i was younger i thought standing in front of something was enough to stop it. if someone was angry, i would stand in front of him. if something broke i would collect the pieces before he stepped of them. and if i couldn’t collect them fast enough, i would step on the pieces before him so they all stay stuck in me and not get to him.

i thought pain was like broken glass, that it could only belong to one person at a time. that if the pieces stayed stuck in me, they couldn’t make their way into him.

i think i became an older sister too seriously. when i first learned about his existence all i dreamed about was to put my dolls in his cars and drive them around. but when it happened, at five, i didn’t care about dolls anymore. people say five years of an existence is a child, but i don’t remember feeling like one after that.

i remember looking and him and deciding things, the moment i held his hand in the hospital, i would protect him. whatever happened to me would stop with me. that if there was something ugly in this house, something sharp, something that could hurt, i would stand in front of it before it reached him. i don’t know if children think of these, but i know they become them.

for years i carried this quiet belief that if i loved him enough, watched him carefully enough, worried enough, sacrificed enough, i could become that shield between him and everything that hurts. as if me suffering from enough would pay for his part. then he got sick.

and i learned that there are some things love cannot stand in front of. that is the part nobody tells you.

i spent my entire life believing if i stood between him and the world long enough, the world wouldn’t reach him.

i don’t remember my collapse when i think of the moment i first learned about it. i remember everyone else’s reactions. i remember my mother’s grief, crying in the kitchen and calling for me. i remember my father’s silence like his words were hidden in empty bottles.

i remember how the house seemed to tilt slightly, as if someone was moving the walls slow enough that no one noticed. but i don’t remember crying. and for a long time i thought that meant i wasn’t devastated. i now know i was so filled with it that i started to absorb it, not spill out.

people think grief always looks like crying. sometimes it looks like carrying water in your hands and trying not to spill any. collecting more and more water from people in even when you don’t have place left in your hands. sometimes it looks like swallowing your own fear whole because someone else is looking at you for answers.

i think i became a bridge. everyone else was drowning in their own way. and i stood there pretending i was made of wood instead of flesh. pretending i could hold weight. pretending i wasn't terrified.

the first time i cried was months later. not in a hospital. not after a diagnosis. not during one of the conversations that should have broken me. it happened because of a girl on my phone. she had the same disease. i remember her face. i remember the color of her skin. i remember looking at her and feeling something inside me collapsing, not being able to hold it anymore. like one crack appearing in my body made of wood and everything slowly leaking.

one video. one face. one possibility. and suddenly the whole thing comes rushing through. i cried the entire night. not because of the girl. because of my brother. because for the first time, i understood that love cannot negotiate with reality.

all those years i had spent protecting him. all those years standing in front of things. all those years believing i could absorb pain before it reached him. and suddenly there was something standing in front of me instead. something i could not move. something that would not listen. something that did not care how much i loved him.

people talk about helplessness as if it is an emotion. it isn’t. it is a place. it feels like arriving at a locked door carrying everything you have and realizing none of it fits the keyhole. i have been living there for three years. sometimes i think the guilt comes from forgetting that i am his sister and not his savior. because when something hurts him, my first instinct is still to look for a way to carry it myself. to absorb it.

sometimes i feel guilty for being healthy. not because i think i deserve to be sick. because i think he deserves not to be. i don't want suffering. i just don't want it to belong to him. if suffering is a house, i keep looking at the address and thinking there has been some mistake.

someone delivered it to the wrong person. someone switched the names. someone misread the handwriting. because when i look at him, i still see the little boy i spent my life trying to protect. i still see the child who made me want to survive. the child who gave me a reason to stay. the child i loved before he had words for what love was. and maybe that is the part i am grieving. not who he is. not who he became. but the illusion that i could keep him safe forever.

i miss believing that if i stood in front of him long enough, the world would eventually give up trying to reach him. instead, i learned something much smaller and much sadder.

diseases don’t care how much you love someone. they don’t care that he is young. they don’t care if he is good. they don’t care that he is your brother. they don’t care how desperately you would trade places, how much you would sacrifice for it not be them, but you.

you don’t start begging for it to stop for him, you beg for it to be you, not him. because somehow it feels like you have to be the one to live it for him to not live it.

i hate whatever part of this universe looked at him and decided he could carry this. because when i look at him, i still see the little boy i was trying to protect. the little boy i built my life around. the little boy who was supposed to stay untouched by all the things that touched me.

and maybe that is why i am still angry.

because i understand hospitals. i understand medicine. i understand diagnoses. what i do not understand is how the world got to him. how it found him. how it looked at someone so young, so precious, so deeply loved, and decided he would have to carry this. i still don't understand. maybe i never will.

sometimes grief is not losing someone. it is watching the world get to them anyway. not caring how much you sacrificed, and how much willing you are to sacrifice more, but still choosing them.

realizing you weren’t able to stand in front of everything. it could have been me, but it is him. we have the same genes, we came from the same womb. he had someone to stand against everything for him, i didn’t, and still he was chosen.

i thought if the pieces stayed stuck in me, they could never make their way into him.

i know now that some arrive without ever touching the floor.

we started in the same womb.

somehow i spent my whole life trying to convince the world that if it needed something, it could take me instead.

the world never listened.

we give empathy to others that we keep from ourselves. we disconnect from our past selves too much, distancing ourselves until we feel like they are unnecessary, and we end up forgetting what it was like. and because deep down we know that it is us, we do not even question like we would. we don’t ask to understand. we don’t say “why?”. it is the same action, reading someone’s thoughts that doesn’t feel like us. but the reaction is different. because empathy disappears the moment the person becomes us. when a friend tells us they did something self-destructive, embarrassing, desperate, irrational, our first reaction is to ask questions. ask why. but when it’s us we don’t even listen what is said fully. the shame often acts as certainty that we don’t even question.

they are sometimes reminders of pain, the girl that comes up to your mind when you are staring at your ceiling with a similar feeling, and you are her again. and you hate it, because it reminds you of pain. we forget that those versions aren’t the cause, they are the reaction. when we are sick we blame the disease, not the fever that is there as a symptom of something happening underneath. when someone is acting in ways that seem absurd, we don’t blame them, we try to understand what is underneath, we try to see the whole situation, ask them what they were feeling and why they did what they did. when it’s us, we villainize that version, like they are the disease.

you know how the story ends now, she doesn’t. she stands in the middle of a story while you stay at the end staring at her. of course, you think you should’ve acted differently, you know the end.

we forget the feeling, how it felt at that moment. we remember the story, not the narrator. we remember who broke our heart, what we said, what mistake we fell into but we forget the feeling: the loneliness, the fear, the uncertainty. the exact feeling standing there not knowing if it will get better. without those feelings, it stops making sense. we read the summary and then wonder why the characters behaved so strangely.

in “the girl’s story”, annie ernaux writes, “the girl in the picture was a stranger who imparted her memory to me.” while she looks at an old picture of her that creates shame. sometimes our old selves feel like a stranger. someone we have the memory of, almost like we just read their diary secretly but they are still a stranger and they did not tell anything other than what happened. we forget the whole story. it’s like we have the memory, but we were never there. but deep down, we know it’s us, so we don’t ask.

even the versions we hate were created by something that we felt. they were protection, from something. when you question why the behavior was created, what it was protecting, it’s harder to hate it. so we don’t question, because it is us. maybe because it feels like forgiveness, as if understanding why she did it meant forgiving her. that doesn’t mean we are saying it’s okay.

when it was someone else, we would become investigators trying to understand, when it is us we become the judge, the jury, and the executioner. we give the last sentence without even allowing them to speak. we arrive at the trial with a choice we already made.

we love that we changed, that we evolved into who we are today, but we deny the step that brought us there. she built the stairs so hard that she got trapped inside it, even beneath. you got up the stairs. she stayed there.

we love the transformed version, everyone does. nobody wants to listen about the version who cried on the bathroom floor scared her heart would explode or the one who watched everything break into pieces and get stuck in her feet bleeding. yet those versions did the work. not the one talking right now like she is embarrassing.

she is still there, being carried inside of you. even when you talk like she is dead, she is right there. that seven year old kid still acts like an adult and the fourteen year old girl still stays up all night. to evolve we don’t have to replace them. we have to accept who they made us become. we are the art piece, they were there during the process, now stuck beneath the paint over them. the artist knows them, you are the artist. you are not someone who visits the museum, and if you were, you would read the piece of writing next to it. because you are empathetic towards everyone, but you.

what if that girl was sitting in front of you, not the memory, the person. you could even hear her heartbeat because she is too scared, or see her swollen eyes because she cried all night, or not hearing her voice because she spent the whole night screaming out of fear. that’s the girl whose diary you are reading. the one who wrote those pages. the one who cried onto those pages because she had no one else to tell. the one who stayed up until the morning. the one you now hate and make fun of. would you actually speak to her the way you speak about her? or would you offer her a glass of water, give her a hug, and ask what happened?

the belief felt too real. as a child you don’t question the logic of the sky. if the moon appears every time you look for it, then of course it is following you.

being a protector, a guardian was always a male figure to me. the act of protection was masculine. hearing about fathers being the protector, seeing male heroes saving people in cartoons, men being physically stronger made me know one thing: protector equals masculine.

with time i started seeing moon as feminine. i learned about how linked it is to the menstrual cycle, and more. but it was not that, at least not only that. it was that protection stopped being authority or physical strength. it became something more: presence, intuition, guidance, compassion, love.

the moon stayed the same, it didn’t changed. it kept following me and guarding me with it presence. it was me that changed, it was my interpretation evolving with my understanding of the world.

the moon never protected me physically but it always kept me company. sometimes protection is just something being there, witnessing your being.

i realized that the stereotype that men were protectors were just what i was exposed to, not the truth. it was being embroidered in my mind since the day i was born and it twisted my perception.

now i know a woman can protect herself, and others. i know that women are even more protective than these days, and men are more of a threat.

even now, when i look out of a car window at night, the moon still seems to follow me. i know that she isn’t chasing the car i’m in from the sky but a part of me still feels the comfort of being protected. not because a grandpa is guarding me from above, but a presence is witnessing my existence.

my heartbeat is always different in different moments and places. it echoes in my body, showing it's reflection to my mind. i feel what i feel through my heartbeat and how it makes me act, breath. i love that when i'm feeling something so intense and someone thinks that i'm being dramatic, i can take their hand and press it to my chest, through my heart, and it's enough proof of the intensity because it sometimes feels like insanity, maybe it is, but embracing it as intensity instead of insanity is a lot easier in meaning even though the name sounds similar.

my heart beating and me liking it is extraordinary, i thought about it stopping seven thousand times. i don't usually notice my heartbeat, but sometimes when my emotions are too intense and my heart starts to ache, it becomes too noticeable that i want to get rid of it, rip it off my chest and throw it as far away as possible until it stops beating, or stop it when it is still a part of my body. it sometimes starts hitting my chest a little too hard that i don't know what to do.

sometimes when i feel to much it's almost like my heart is going to get out of mu chest. but i don't know because it also beats hard when i take the stairs to the top floor. however, they feel different. i feel the first one in my heart, or soul. it's ache of love. the second one is through my breath, moving through my body. it's stairs making my breath run out. it feels like there is no cure and my senses are not working, like the world is flat and i'm on top of it and i'm gonna fall soon because i'm too near to the edge, and my senses blur.

i love my heartbeat the most when i'm in love because it's the proof of what i'm experiencing and love is the whole experience.

sometimes when i need proof i press my hand to my chest and feel my heartbeat, and it's the proof that i'm here.

sometimes i wonder if people who feel less intensely notice their hearts the same way. if their bodies speak as loudly as mine does. or if mine is just trying harder to be noticed.

maybe that’s what i’m always looking for. something solid enough to hold onto when everything else feels abstract. my heartbeat doesn’t explain anything. it doesn’t solve anything. it just insists that i’m here, feeling whatever i’m feeling, fully and without apology. and that is enough.

i’m still writing this with my palm pressed to my chest. not because i’m afraid of losing the rhythm, but because i want to stay with it. as long as it’s beating, there is something happening. as long as i can feel it, i know i exist inside my own life.

and that’s the proof.

One of the most intimate moments in Romeo and Juliet occurs during the balcony scene. Juliet expresses her emotions openly and honestly, making herself emotionally vulnerable in front of Romeo. Intimacy is defined by the American Psychological Association as “an interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each party’s personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort.” Juliet’s willingness to speak freely about her love exemplifies this form of emotional intimacy. She does not perform love for Romeo; instead, she speaks as if to herself, unaware at first that he is listening. This removes any pressure to impress and highlights the authenticity of her emotions.

Juliet’s language in the balcony scene contrasts sharply with Romeo’s earlier romantic exaggerations. While Romeo often relies on elaborate metaphors and idealized imagery, Juliet’s speech is grounded in emotional truth and sincerity. When she says, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite,” she expresses love as something mutual, growing, and emotionally sustaining. This metaphor suggests that intimacy is not diminished by vulnerability but instead strengthened by it. Unlike their first meeting, which is playful and flirtatious, the balcony scene reveals love stripped of performance. Juliet continues to speak honestly even after realizing Romeo is present, showing that her emotional openness is not dependent on his reaction. This moment represents pure emotional intimacy, which is arguably more significant than physical intimacy in establishing deep romantic bonds.

Passion is the force that drives Romeo and Juliet’s relationship forward. From the moment they meet, their attraction is immediate and overwhelming. According to the American Psychological Association, passion is “an intense, driving, or overwhelming feeling or conviction” that often affects individuals involuntarily. In the balcony scene, this passion deepens as both characters verbally confess their love. Juliet’s comparison of her love to the infinite sea emphasizes its intensity and uncontrollable nature. The imagery of depth and infinity suggests a love that consumes her entirely, mirroring the overwhelming quality of passion described in psychology.

Their passion is also evident in their impulsive behavior. Despite barely knowing each other, Romeo and Juliet feel an urgent need to be together. Romeo’s decision to climb into the Capulet garden, knowing he could be killed if discovered, highlights how passion overrides logic and self-preservation. His declaration that “love’s light wings” carried him over the wall reflects how passion gives him a false sense of invincibility. This recklessness underscores the idea that passion, while powerful and intoxicating, can also be dangerous when left unchecked. Shakespeare presents passion as both beautiful and destructive, a duality that foreshadows the tragic outcome of the play.

The balcony scene also strongly conveys commitment, which transforms their love from infatuation into devotion. Commitment is defined by the American Psychological Association as “obligation or devotion to a person, relationship, task, or cause.” During this scene, Romeo and Juliet move beyond emotional confession and make serious promises to one another. Romeo’s willingness to risk his life by entering enemy territory reveals his devotion and readiness to sacrifice for Juliet. His actions demonstrate that his love is not merely spoken but enacted.

Juliet’s understanding of commitment is even more striking. Unlike Romeo, she approaches love with caution and seriousness, questioning the speed and intensity of their feelings. She seeks permanence rather than temporary passion, insisting on marriage as proof of true commitment. Her willingness to give up her family name and social identity emphasizes the depth of her devotion. In a society where family loyalty defines one’s existence, Juliet’s choice reflects extraordinary emotional commitment. Both characters willingly bind themselves to each other despite knowing the risks, showing that their love contains all three essential components of romantic love.

Some may argue that Romeo and Juliet’s love is immature due to its suddenness. However, the balcony scene demonstrates that while their love is young, it is emotionally complex. Shakespeare portrays their relationship as psychologically intense rather than shallow, combining deep emotional intimacy, overwhelming passion, and genuine commitment. Their tragedy lies not in the absence of real love, but in the excess of it, combined with external forces such as family conflict and fate.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare presents romantic love as a powerful union of intimacy, passion, and commitment, all of which are vividly revealed in the balcony scene. Their love is emotionally honest, intensely passionate, and deeply devoted. However, these same qualities also contribute to the tragic trajectory of the play. By portraying love as overwhelming and consuming, Shakespeare suggests that even the purest love can become destructive when it exists in a world defined by conflict, impulsivity, and fate.

i was seven years old. i did not miss the dance because i didn’t knew the choreography or because i was too exhausted to keep up. i was looking up. i remember wanting to memorize the way the light broke apart and came back together again. i did not know then that this was something i would keep doing, stopping inside a moment and losing track of the room around me. everything else moving perfectly while i just stop. everything i wanna look at for a second catches my whole attention until nothing around me is real but that.

the mirror turns into countless mirrors, like the mirror ball, reflecting inward. i stare at every inch of my body, wanting to memorize every single part. not to admire this time, but to criticize. sometimes i find myself staring into the mirror, forgetting where the mirror is placed, or where i am at. the only thing exists is the reflection and myself.

this follows me. i find myself researching some small detail and then end up in an entirely different page hours later. i start writing a little paragraph just to stare at pages full of thoughts later. it always starts the same way, i want to look for a second, and stay there for a lot longer.

i didn’t know what to call it at seven. i only knew that time could stretch without warning. i learned early that my mind could move independently from the room it was in. i learned that i could stop without falling. that i could disappear without anyone noticing right away.

teachers used words like distracted. unfocused. daydreaming. none of them were precise enough. daydreaming suggests something soft, something chosen. this was different. it felt like gravity. like the way your eyes adjust to darkness without asking.

sometimes that is something is a book. sometimes it’s a sentence i can’t stop rereading because it seems to open into another sentence, and another, and another. sometimes it is an idea that i dive into until i start to sink and it becomes a part of me.

when someone calls my name, it first feels like a sound underwater. it takes repetition to break through. returning is never immediate. awareness comes back in layers. first sound. then space. then the sense of having been gone somewhere without moving.

i don’t feel embarrassed when this happens. i feel slightly displaced. like i’ve arrived late to something that’s already been happening without me, however it feels like my fault. it’s the same motion every time. the same spiral.

there is comfort in this state. when attention collapses into one point, the rest of the world stops making demands. there is no noise. no expectation. no need to perform or respond. just the object of focus and the quiet that forms around it.

it is hard to call it a problem, it doesn’t feel like chaos, it feels like quite the opposite. but the cost is time. the cost is absence. things continue without me. conversations move forward. rooms change shape. music keeps playing. i am always catching up with scenes that already started.

the memory of the mirror ball returns often because it was the first time this pattern revealed itself so clearly. the first time my stillness stood out against everyone else’s movement. the first time someone had to pull me back by name.

the mirror ball didn’t demand anything from me. it didn’t ask me to move faster or perform better. it didn’t care if i was late or off-beat. it just turned. endlessly. calmly. reflecting light in pieces.

i still find myself drawn to things that behave like that mirror ball. things with depth. with repetition. with surfaces that lead inward instead of outward.

people often ask how i can focus for so long. how i can read or write for hours without noticing the time. they assume discipline. effort. productivity. i don’t know how to explain that it isn’t effort at all. it’s release. it’s letting go of the room.

when i come back, i am always behind, delayed. like my body and my attention have been moving on different timelines and need a moment to realign. i look around to confirm where i am. i listen for context. i try to catch the moment.

i am still here. i have always been here. i just have a habit of slipping sideways into moments and staying longer than intended.

the mirror ball is still turning somewhere above a stage i no longer stand on. the music is still playing. everyone else is still moving in time.

sometimes i stop and look up. sometimes someone says my name. sometimes i just stay there.

i lost my grandpa’s brother, who was almost like my actual grandpa due to alzheimer. he lived in the same apartment as me, two floors down. somedays he would remember me, somedays he won’t. one moment i was his little girl and he would look at me with love. another moment his eyes would be empty, he wouldn’t know me, or our memories.

i lost him slowly, more and more every day. each one of us did. he lost himself slowly and we lost him.

losing someone like this is watching time take tiny pieces of a person you love and not being able to do anything except witness the unraveling. it’s like standing on a shore where the water pulls sand from beneath your feet, grain by grain, until one day you realize there is nothing left to stand on. with alzheimer, the cruelty is in the slowness. the waiting. the knowing. the first goodbye is never the final one. you say goodbye to their voice, then their habits, then the way they say your name, then the way they look at you, then the way they look at themselves.

when someone is a part of your childhood you grieve more than ever. you grieve the person they were, the person they were becoming, and who you were with them. psychologists call this “secondary grief”, it’s when you’re grieving not only the person, but who you were next to them.

childhood bonds are storied in what’s called “deep episodic memory”, which is linked to comfort, safety, and early identity formation. when someone tied to those memories disappears, the brain registers it as a threat to identity, not just a loss.

you don’t just lose them—you lose the world you lived in with them, the version of yourself that only existed in their presence. suddenly you realize that some parts of you were shaped by their hands, their voice, their stories, their little rituals. losing them means losing the person who knew the child version of you. losing the person who saw pieces of you that no one else sees anymore.

with illnesses like alzheimer you feel like you experience a double death. you lose them mentally first till it happens physically. this is anticipatory grief, mourning someone before they’re gone.

this changes your understanding of life forever. memory is one of the strongest foundations of identity. watching someone lose their memories makes you realize memories are not permanent. the way you watch someone not only forget you but also forget themselves shifts your view on humanity.

there is a moment, every family experiences it, where your name no longer unlocks anything in their mind. you say “it’s me” but the recognition never comes. and even though you know it’s the illness, it still feels like a wound. a strange loneliness appears: the loneliness of being known by someone who no longer remembers they once loved you.

when they lose your memory, you start remembering everything they told you even more. it’s almost like you’re keeping their stories for them. you become the keeper of their identity.

you start telling their stories. not only for other people, but for them. so their stories will stay alive, even though they didn’t.

and there is beauty in that, even if it hurts. there is something holy about carrying someone’s memory inside your own, something almost protective, like holding a fragile thing in your palms and whispering “i won’t let you disappear.”

and at the end, you lose them, but you try to remind yourself that they are not hurting anymore.

and somehow, that has to be enough.

even though grief never leaves, it softens. it becomes quieter. it becomes a shadow that walks with you, reminding you that you loved someone so deeply that losing them reshaped your entire understanding of what it means to be alive.

this is catharsis through chaos.

in ancient greek, katharsis meant purification, a cleansing of the soul through the act of feeling. aristotle believed tragedy allowed people to purge pity and fear, to reach emotional clarity through witnessing destruction.

but today, we don’t sit in theaters watching kings fall, we live the tragedy ourselves. we implode privately. our modern stage is our mind.

and yesterday, i realized something that shattered me and healed me at the same time.

i realized that i was fooling myself, that i’ve been choosing to unsee the things that hurt me, that harm me, just because i wanted to believe they held a chance of loving me. i was so desperate for love that i called pain devotion and silence affection.

and yet, to finally see that truth, i had to go through a full mental breakdown. it was like my mind broke open just so light could enter. i had to lose my illusions to find clarity. i had to destroy the fantasy to see reality.

we break down not because we are weak, but because our bodies cannot hold the weight of what we’ve silenced.

emotional breakdowns, in this sense, are not random, they’re messages from the unconscious saying, listen to me or die pretending. jung might have called it the moment the “shadow” demands recognition. freud called it abreaction, the release of repressed emotion.

whatever the name, the purpose is the same: collapse to become whole.

and yet, chaos terrifies us. we try to numb it, avoid it, disguise it as busyness or apathy. but every time we bury pain, it grows roots. and one day it rises like floodwater. the breakdown comes, not as an enemy, but as an awakening.

through tears, we see the truth we couldn’t face in daylight.

through destruction, we find our most honest reflection.

art often mirrors this process. sylvia plath’s the bell jar was written from the pit of despair, yet it remains a work of clarity. frida kahlo painted her wounds and made them eternal. virginia woolf found language for fragmentation itself. these artists didn’t overcome chaos, they transformed it. pain became creation, and creation became purification.

they remind us that art is not born from stability, but from the moments we think we might not survive.

there’s a strange beauty in ruin.

society romanticizes madness because deep down, we all long to be cleansed, to start again without the masks we’ve learned to wear. but this fascination isn’t shallow. it’s spiritual. it recognizes that destruction and rebirth are inseparable. the phoenix burns so it can rise. the storm floods the soil so it can bloom again.

especially for women, breakdown has long been misread as hysteria, something to be cured, silenced, medicated. but within that hysteria is a voice that has been denied for centuries. feminine rage, grief, and chaos are not failures of control, they are sacred eruptions of truth.

the woman who screams, who destroys, who refuses to be quiet, she isn’t losing herself. she’s meeting herself.

so yes, maybe the only way to accept something is to break down over it.

maybe catharsis is not gentle, but violent. maybe it’s supposed to hurt.

because before we can rebuild, we must see what’s been buried. and that sight; raw, shaking, unfiltered, is the first step to self-awareness.

when the chaos ends, there’s silence.

not the silence of repression, but the silence of peace. the kind that comes after a storm, when the air smells clean and the body feels emptied out, almost holy.

in that moment, you realize:

you didn’t destroy yourself.

you just burned what wasn’t you anymore.

and that, perhaps, is the truest catharsis there is.

i used to think i was just impulsive and haircuts were just one of my impulsive decisions born from chaos. i even thought it was a way to punish myself, after crying all night sitting on the bathroom floor, i would pick up the scissors from the top shelf and let the scissors touch my hair without thinking twice. now every time i cut my hair, i can feel the release of something inside of me. something that i am finally letting go.

hair holds memory. it grows while you stay. it makes you remember.

in many cultures, hair cutting is a ritual of mourning, transformation, or spiritual rebirth. maybe it is just a way to mourn yourself, that version of yourself that should leave.

some shave their heads to release attachment. in hindu and buddhist traditions, shaving one’s head symbolizes purification and rebirth. monks and devotees remove their hair to signify leaving their old selves behind.

historically, women in grief cut their hair to signal change. it's all to tell: something inside me is dead now, i’m releasing it and letting something else born. it is like a physical manifestation of inner mourning after a death or heartbreak that changed you.

cutting hair allows people to reclaim who they are over their bodies and appearance, it is a visible way to mark change, from one emotion to another.

psychologically, hair cutting can be a coping mechanism. some studies and anecdotal evidence suggests that it is a ritual of release. during moments of intense emotional pain, cutting your hair can provide a sense of closure or catharsis. it externalizes what is going on internally. cutting your hair provides a sense of control when everything feels out of control. it’s also a way of identity reconstruction. when someone feels lost or fragmented, cutting hair can be a way to reconstruct the self and become someone new without leaving your body. people also often cut their hair after a breakup, mental health crisis, or a major life change as a marking of personal milestones. this consciously or unconsciously signals personal growth or separation from the past.

the hair is thought to hold spiritual power: the longer it is, the more energy it absorbs from the world. cutting hair then is not only symbolic, it’s also about energy. it’s a way to purge negative energy and release. in indigenous traditions, hair is often left uncut to maintain spiritual connection; cutting it is a sacred act that requires awareness. in occult and witchcraft practices, hair can hold your essence; cutting it can release that essence, break old ties, or mark a transformation of identity or intention. in some magical traditions or witchcraft practices, hair is incorporated into spells for protection, release, or manifestation. by cutting it, you actively participate in a symbolic transformation.

your hairstyle, length, and habits are deeply tied to how to present yourself to the world. it’s a physical embodiment of self-reinvention, marking the difference between who you were, who you are, and who you wish to become.

throughout history of art and literature hair cutting has appeared to be a symbol of liberation, grief, and transformation.

in virginia wool'f’s mrs. dalloway, woolf often references hair in subtle, symbolic ways. for clarissa, arranging and thinking about hair is a ritual, reflecting control over self-image and social identity. a change in her hair represents inner emotional states, even if it is understated, hair is a mirror of psyche.

in sylvia plath’s the bell jar, plath’s protagonist, esther, contemplates cutting her hair during depressive episodes. hair becomes a physical representation of her mental state. cutting it is an attempt at reclaiming autonomy over her body and mind.

in german expressionist works from 1910s to 1930s, artists like egon schiele often depicted women with loose hair or hair being pulled or cut. the act of hair cutting in these works signals emotional turbulence, identity crises, or the stripping away of societal facades. hair becomes a visual metaphor for inner chaos and psychic liberation.

in modern photography and performance art, artists like yoko ono and valie export use hair cutting in performances to embody protest, grief, or personal transformation. hair is a medium of expression, not just decoration, its loss or alteration tells a story of identity being reshaped.

cutting hair is never just cutting hair. it is letting go, marking transformation, and rewriting the story of who we are. every strand holds memory, pain, and pieces of ourselves we no longer need to carry. in the act of cutting, we make space for rebirth, for the parts of us that are ready to grow again. it is a ritual, a declaration, and sometimes the only way to release what has been stuck inside. whether in personal experience, cultural traditions, or artistic expression, hair embodies identity, memory, and emotion. to cut it is to confront yourself, to shed, and to claim your own freedom. in every snip, there is grief, hope, and the quiet power of becoming

.

this was always an issue since greek mythology. it all starts with dionysus, who is zeus’s son from a mortal. he is convicted to madness and many emotional episodes by hera. he was caged by the unstableness of emotions.

aristotle talks about the relationship between artists and melancholy, while platon talks about how art without a little crazyness is never perfect. we all know art isn’t perfect and imperfection is actually what makes art get closer to perfection. “crazyness” or “madness” is very much related to what the brain produces . madness is freedom when it comes to creativity. it lets you be free with your work and go deep into your mind searching for the deepest and darkest inspirations.

eissler, leonardo da vinci, and goethe writes about how psychophatology is important in creatvity and that it fuels it in their books. for them, creativity comes from twisted psychosis, the twisted and dark sides of the brain that are slightly disturbing if not extremely. the twist turns psychosis into creativity and ends up as art. art world is full of suicides which is oftenly caused by emotional dysfunctioning episodes and disorders. psychosis can make you end your own life, but also can make you create. maybe that is why creating feels like escaping from this world that we are trapped into.

virginia woolf is one of the most known authors of 20th century, who has bipolar disorder. she had several episodes that resulted in creativity. the one after her mother died and more. she acknowledged that there is a connection between her psychological extremes and creativeness, especially during her elevated moods, hypomania. during hypomania, woolf experienced symptoms like increased productivity, racing thoughts, intense focus, and sleeplessness which made her write for hours without sleeping.

woolf wrote “to the lighthouse” in a relatively short time period during her heightened mental activity. she was emotionally intense and she described it as a kind of trance when she was writing. this reflected to the novel with psychological depth. “the waves” were also written in a burst of creativity, woolf called it a “playpoem”, it was more experimental than her previous works and she pushed herself to try new narrating styles and more which can be seen as a reflection of her manic energy and desire to capture the complexity. she also had depressive episodes which reflected into novels of her like “mrs. dalloway”, by exploring alienation, existential despair, and the fragility of identity. in “mrs. dalloway”, woolf’s own suicidal thoughts and mental distress can be felt. woolf described having voices in her head and periods of deep confusion.

despite the times she was stable and productive, woolf’s final depressive episode in 1941 overwhelmed her, creating a complete mental breakdown mixed with the stress of world war II and the bombing of london. she believed that she was once again becoming a burden to her husband. she died by suicide, filling her coat with stones and drowning herself in the river ouse.

another great example is sylvia plath. we have a lot of knowledge about her mental state from “the bell jar” which is inspired by her own life and written a small time before she died due to suicide. she has several suicide attempts and she has an urge to self destruct that we can clearly see in her journals, writing, and poems. her writing’s poeticness was coming from her talent but the emotional intensity was coming from her mental state.

plath’s mental illness helped her push her boundaries for confessional poetry. she used poetry to explore intensely personal experiences, including trauma, motherhood, and the thought of suicide and death. her willingness to expose her inner chaos helped her to make her writing more emotionally intense and strong.

near the end of her life, during her final depressive episode, plath wrote some of her most known and loved poems, her poetry collection “ariel”.

despite her emotional instability, she experienced a kind of hyper-productivity. this burst of creativity resulted in some of the most haunting and admired poetry in modern literature.

plath’s emotional dysfunction didn’t cause her talent, only shaped her voice. her mental state gave her access to psychological depth in her writing.

looking to the population, psychosis, emotional dysfunctioning disorders, depressive disorders, and alcoholism are more common in artist compared to others. some thought there was a relationship between schzophrenia and creativity, and they were proved to be right. with a few experiments it’s seen that people who have emotionaş dysfunctioning disorders are more open to being creative and express that. with a few researches it was also seen that this was more common in women compared to men.

also suicidal thoughts are more common in artists compared to the control group. anthony starr says “some creative people don’t only stay depressive but use their creativity as a way to defend themselves.” which is clearly understandable because it’s seen that artists are usually artists because they feel the need to regulate their emotions by creating art. it’s a way of coping.

maye creativity is episodic just like many mental disorders. maybe creativity is a disorder. maybe creativity is sourced by madness, and maybe the crazier we get the more creative we get

.

i wrote a letter last night. it was long and messy and probably too honest. i didn’t even use the right paper; it was the first thing i found. my handwriting looked unfamiliar, like i was writing as someone else, someone who still believed there could be an ending that didn’t ache.

but then i burned it.

i watched every word disappear, and for a second, it felt like watching a version of myself vanish with it, the version that kept reaching for something already gone.

letters are extensions of the self. they are memory made visible, emotion turned into ink. to write a letter is to confess without interruption, to pour a part of your inner world onto paper. letters carry what was unsaid, what was almost said, what was too heavy to say aloud.

they symbolize connection, or the longing for it. even if the letter is never sent, the act of writing creates a thread between two souls, one reaching for the other through words.

but letters also symbolize time. every letter is a moment sealed, a fragment of who you were when you wrote it. reading old letters can feel like meeting an old version of yourself who still believed, still waited, still loved. in that sense, letters hold ghosts. they preserve emotion long after it has ended.

letters have always felt sacred to me. they’re like glass bottles thrown into the sea, something you send out hoping it might be found, even if you never know when or by who. they carry the parts of you that couldn’t survive being spoken out loud. i think that’s why i always end up writing letters i’ll never send. it’s easier to confess to paper. it doesn’t look away.

but burning them was a different kind of confession.

it’s the final one. it’s the point where longing turns to release. the moment when you stop writing for them and start writing for yourself.

fire is transformation. it consumes, purifies, and releases. burning has always been a ritual of release, people have burned offerings, old photographs, notes, and diaries as a way of symbolically letting go.

burning is final, but not cruel. it says, this existed, and now it doesn’t. it’s a sacred end, a small ceremony that gives closure to what couldn’t be closed with words.

fire also symbolizes catharsis, a release of what’s been suppressed. when you burn something, you witness it disappear, and with it, a piece of your attachment fades. it’s pain, but it’s also rebirth. the flames don’t just destroy, they make space for newness.

fire has always meant transformation destruction disguised as mercy. when i burn letters, i’m not trying to erase love. i’m trying to let it breathe somewhere else. the smoke rises, the paper folds in on itself, and for a second, it feels like the past is dissolving in front of me. i think that’s why it hurts, because release always does.

and maybe destruction is just another form of burning.

when you burn a letter, you’re destroying the proof of a feeling. you’re saying: i felt this deeply, but it doesn’t own me anymore.

it’s a way of distracting your heart into healing, by focusing on the ritual, the smoke, the ash, the flicker of flame, your mind releases the tension it’s been holding. you give your emotions somewhere to go.

it’s also symbolic of forgiveness, not necessarily of the person you wrote to, but of yourself. for loving too much. for holding on too long. for needing closure you never got.

burning letters is both destruction and devotion. destruction of the memory, devotion to your own peace.

you give your words to the fire so that they can stop haunting you in silence.

burning letters isn’t about closure; it’s about gentleness. it’s about giving your feelings somewhere to go so they don’t keep living inside you. because some emotions are too heavy to carry forever.

and when the paper turns to ash, when the smoke disappears into the air, there’s always that moment after. the silence that follows.

it’s the kind that doesn’t ache.

it’s the kind that feels like peace, like something has finally been understood, even if nothing has been said.

maybe that’s what healing really is. not forgetting, not moving on, but turning the things that once consumed you into something lighter. something that can drift away.

by destructing the paper, by burning it, i release that person who i wrote the letters to from my mind. i release them with the smoke pretending i will never think of them again. but i do, i will forever do, maybe just a little less.

i think that’s what the fire teaches: that even love, when it burns, can be beautiful in its ending.

but the very thing that made her so brilliant also made her mortal in the most violent way. the gauzy costumes that allowed her to float, that made her seem untouchable, were also dangerous, flammable, ready to betray her at any moment. in november 1862, during a rehearsal, her costume caught fire. she survived for eight more months, burned both inside and out, until her body could no longer endure. she died at twenty-one. twenty-one. a number so small, yet in that short span, she became infinite.

there is something unbearably tragic about this. the thing she loved most, the thing that made her feel alive, that gave her wings, is the same thing that killed her. passion is a fire. it lifts you beyond yourself, carries you to places you’ve never imagined, lets you touch the sublime. and yet, passion does not ask for permission. it does not negotiate. it can also consume, destroy, leave you raw and hollow. emma’s life reminds us that when we surrender completely to what we love, there is no guarantee we will survive. sometimes, passion is as dangerous as it is intoxicating.

and yet, there is a beauty in that surrender. emma lived entirely, fully, without hesitation. she gave herself to her art with a reckless devotion. she trusted the fire, even though she could not see its end. in those fleeting years, she became more than a dancer; she became a symbol, a warning, a promise. she is the reminder that the things that make us feel most alive: art, love, desire, beauty; can also be the things that burn us. we are not promised safety in pursuit of brilliance, only the chance to touch it, to live inside it, even if only briefly.

there is also something haunting in her legacy. to watch emma livry dance is to see someone who seems untethered, as if her body is not hers, as if she is already halfway to another world. her fire lives in the way we remember her, in the flicker of her image, in the idea of her that we carry. it is a kind of immortality reserved for those who burn too bright, too fast. she teaches us that passion is both ecstasy and risk, that to give ourselves fully to what we love is always to gamble with our own destruction. and yet, perhaps that is the point: to live in fire, to feel the burn, to embrace the danger, is to truly know what it is to be alive.

emma livry will always be remembered as a dancer who flew too close to the sun, a woman whose life was brief and luminous, a flame that illuminated the fragile, dangerous, beautiful nature of giving oneself entirely. she shows us the cost of passion, yes, but also the brilliance it leaves behind. the fire devours, it hurts, it destroys, and yet, it also makes us unforgettable. in emma’s light, we see what it means to surrender, to create, to burn, and to leave the world a little brighter than we found it.