I woke up somewhere that wasn’t mine.
Not a room. Not a memory. Just a place that existed between two blinks—too real to be a dream, too quiet to be life. There were no clocks. No windows. Just a silence that hummed like it had a secret to tell but refused to speak first.
The silence watched not with eyes, but with assumption. Like it had already read my story and was only waiting for me to fall in line.
I stood, bracing for the familiar crash of guilt, shame, and memory. But nothing came. Just the unbearable lightness of being awake in a world that had stopped pretending to care. I was weightless in the worst way, like even gravity didn’t recognize me anymore.
Then the walls changed not moved, changed. They remembered.
My childhood classroom flickered into focus. My sister, radiant and self-assured, spoke in confident tones that the world applauded. I sat behind her, a glitch in the background. My father’s silence echoed louder than any reprimand. I could feel his disappointment press down on me like a second spine.
Next, that rooftop evening her fingers brushed mine, the pause before an almost-confession twisted into fear. I froze. She left. Love had always felt like a language I didn’t trust myself to speak, like a poem in a tongue I’d never master.
Then he appeared.
Me.
But not this me. This one had no mask. No flinch. No apology trailing behind every word. His eyes weren’t kind, but they were honest—sharp from having finally seen too much.
“What are we?” I asked.
“You,” he said, “are what’s left when you stop pretending.”
Then he vanished like fog ashamed of being seen.
And I woke up.
In my bed. In my skin. In my so-called life. But it didn’t fit right anymore. Like wearing someone else’s story. My room felt unfamiliar like I’d stepped back into a narrative I no longer belonged to.
There were still no clocks.
But for once, I wasn’t counting.
For a while, I tried to live as he would.
I said what I meant. I asked for what I needed. I stopped apologizing for existing. For breathing. For taking up space. I looked people in the eye. I told them when they hurt me. I told them when I was hurting. And at first, it felt like pure freedom, jagged, terrifying freedom.
But the world doesn’t reward clarity.
It punishes it.
People recoiled from my honesty like it was a weapon. My laughter felt too loud. My silences were too unsettling. I stopped being invited. Not because they hated me—but because I stopped playing the part they had written for me. And people only love the script, not the actor beneath it.
Disillusionment didn’t come like a storm. It came like rotting quiet, seeping into everything, unnoticed until it had hollowed out the core.
And then one night, I found myself back there.
In the room without clocks.
The silence was thicker now. Heavier. It felt like it had something to prove. Or maybe something to hide.
He was there again.
The other version of me.
He looked neater, softer, like someone the world had chosen to accept. His smile was crafted, polished, and rehearsed to perfection. His eyes shimmered—not with life, but with compliance. Like store mannequins lit just right.
“I know who you are,” I said.
“I know who you were,” he replied.
He was the version of me who chose comfort over truth. Who stayed small, bit his tongue so often it forgot the shape of freedom.
“You look... calm,” I said.
“I am,” he smiled. “It’s easier when you don’t question everything.”
“And emptier.”
He shrugged. “Emptiness doesn’t hurt.”
We stood there, two halves of a war no one else knew existed. He sipped his safety-like wine. I held my chaos like a wound I refused to bandage.
“You believe it’s worth it?” he asked. “This life of peeling skin and unanswered questions?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I know pretending is worse.”
He blinked slowly. “They love me, you know. I belong. I’m admired. I’m seen.”
“No,” I said. “They love who you pretend to be.”
Silence again. But this time, it trembled.
He stepped closer. “You’ll end up alone.”
“I already am,” I said. “But at least I’m not lying to myself.”
And with that, he faded—not with drama, but with disappointment.
Because deep down, he knew I was right.
Now, I move through the world like a ghost in my skin.
I don’t scream the truth. I whisper it. I don’t force people to see me. I simply refuse to vanish.
Some days, I long for the comfort he spoke of the illusion of being loved for a version of me that doesn’t bleed, doesn’t ache, doesn’t question. But I remind myself: comfort is a cage, and truth, though brutal, is air.
I still see him in moments of doubt in the urge to smile when I want to cry, in the reflexive “I’m fine” when I’m breaking. But I don’t answer him anymore. I just breathe. And keep walking.
Because the room without clocks never really let me go.
It stitched itself into me like a scar that doesn’t heal but teaches you to live differently.
Now, every breath I take is a rebellion.
Every silence I break is a prayer to the version of me that never made it out.
Every morning I wake up, I choose this:
The ache.
The truth.
The quiet war of being real in a world that begs for fiction.
I am not healed.
But I am awake.
And I am not going back.
By Observer
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