Writing is how I process what I feel, what I witness, and what I can’t yet name. It’s how I move thoughts from chaos to coherence—not to polish them, but to understand them. It’s how I move through confusion and contradiction, not to find perfection, but to find clarity. I write to let what’s real exist—uncensored, unperformed, and unfiltered. In a world that rewards silence and performance, writing is where I speak freely, where I can tell the truth as I see it in the moment, knowing it may evolve. It’s where I let myself look without turning away.

As Natalie Goldberg wrote, “The writing is not you, yet it is you; it is everything you know coming through you.” These entries are not performances or conclusions—they’re processes: sometimes incorrect, momentary beliefs or feelings that lead me closer to my truth. They are reflections of where I am, not where I’m supposed to be. Writing, for me, is not about resolution but revelation. It’s how I allow my voice, make room for what’s true, and learn to live with what I see.

I share them because honesty shouldn’t live in isolation. The act of sharing makes the private public—not for validation, but for connection. My words are not instructions or ideals; they’re offerings. I share so others might recognize a thought, a feeling, a fracture, and know they’re not alone in it. These reflections are less about being read and more about being witnessed—about creating space for truth to exist between us, unpolished, evolving, and free.

Reflection (Monday, 1 December 2025)

I remember feeling that way: like I was a fraud. Like someone would find me out—as if it wasn’t obvious to begin with. My performance was sloppy at best. I felt that way because I was still performing, still wearing the masks. And that was killing me.

“Or, am I just confused?” I ask.
Yes, that was part of it.

I WAS confused and conflicted—the authentic, genuine me who was learning/unlearning, fighting to find and be me. Resistant to the performance and mask-wearing, constantly questioning and saying the “wrong” thing. I had a bit of a clue here, but I really just didn’t know.

The “false self” and “true self” had been colliding for quite a while at this point. Winnicott describes this moment as the exact psychological tension that forces awakening: the self can no longer tolerate being split. The anger, the being mean—those weren’t me. Not who I innately am. They were masks to cover sadness, grief, hurt, pain. Masks modeled for me. Masks inherited through silence and discomfort. Masks learned because the people around me didn’t know how to hold difficult emotions—so they taught suppression instead of expression.

Montessori wrote, “The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”
But I was raised by people who never received those gifts themselves. Their shadows became my scripts.

When I wondered what others were hiding, I was brushing up against something I couldn’t yet name: the universal performance. The way society shapes us to be palatable rather than honest. The masks we’re all taught to wear to avoid rejection, punishment, shame. Knowing I couldn’t be the only one, but being made to feel like I was—that created the illusion that something was wrong with me.

Piaget would say this was the developmental time when my internal schema stopped believing the illusion that it matched reality. My mind was trying to assimilate experiences it couldn’t reconcile. I was outgrowing the story I had been given about myself.

I didn’t understand then how and when it all started, but I have a better picture now.
I didn’t know back then what it would take to make that feeling of craziness go away—to free myself from generations of unaddressed and unresolved pain, hurt, grief, patterns, cycles.

To get there—to myself, who I am under the mask and without the performance—I had to lose, and give up, nothing short of everything.

Brianna Wiest says, “You are not breaking down. You are breaking open.”
That was me. Breaking open.

I felt stuck for sooooooo long. Because I was, in every aspect, self-sacrificing, masking, performing. I liked the work I did and the family I worked for, but I always had to perform and mask. At the time, the family lived in downtown LA and there wasn’t much we could do. We were stuck indoors a lot.

I felt stuck in every relationship aside from my relationship with AJ. Though there was much self-sacrifice in that relationship, I was always choosing the right person with him.
Stuck in religion—something I had given 8–9 years of my life to, and the entire time I questioned it. The entire time I sensed something was not right.

Whitman once wrote, “Re-examine all you have been told… dismiss what insults your soul.”
That’s what I was doing without knowing it—dismissing what insulted my soul.

It saddens me that for so long I felt “stuck” and “miserable” in my own mind when it was trying to reveal truth to me my entire life.
Psychologically, this is the turning point: the moment you realize the symptoms were messages, not malfunctions.

I wrote that it felt like being stuck in quicksand in the middle of nowhere with no one around to hear me cry, scream, plead, beg for help.
Because the only one who could save me was me.
And to do so, I had to lose everything and embrace silence.

Silence is terrifying until it becomes sanctuary.
As Sylvia Plath once said, “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
But I learned later that my silence wasn’t emptiness—it was clarity waiting for me to be still enough to hear it.

I felt like a stranger to myself because the person I was was the result of others—adults who raised me, societal norms, expectations.
I was right: I never knew myself because the world was too loud, and I hadn’t yet learned to quiet it so I could hear myself.

This aligns with Montessori’s insight that, “We must give the child the world small enough to absorb.”
But I was handed the world in chaos, noise, fear, contradiction. I never had the space to absorb myself.

And as Piaget would say, self-knowledge is constructed—it must be built, not inherited.
I had to reconstruct myself from the ground up.

I didn’t like the person I was or where I was at.
But though I’ve experienced so much pain from all the loss I’ve endured, I can now say: I like where I’m at. I’m proud of the person I am. I’m proud that I was able to reveal her.

Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
For the first time in my life, I finally feel that to be true—not as performance, but as freedom.