i think i’m learning to like my own company again… not the pretending kind, not the “treat yourself” nonsense, but the actual… being okay with the fact that the only voice in the room is mine, and it doesn’t have to be entertaining or profound or even… right, just… there. it’s weird, isn’t it, how much energy it takes to NOT be alone, even when you are, the constant performance of a self for some imaginary audience, the need to fill every void with… something, anything, just to avoid the… echo. and the roof of my mouth feels less prickly than it did last week, almost like the swallowing isn't so constant anymore, maybe some of those words are finally finding their way out, or maybe they just… dissolved, like those little candies cosmo finds on the beach, all worn down by the salt and the sand until they’re just… gone, and that’s okay too, isn’t it, the letting go, the releasing of the stories that don’t fit anymore, the acceptance that some things just… are, and you don’t have to understand them or fix them or even… acknowledge them, you can just… let them be, like the ocean, vast and unknowable and utterly indifferent to your little dramas, and maybe that’s the point, maybe that’s the… freedom, the realization that you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, that you can just… exist, mango-handed and a little bit lost and cosmically… itchy, and that’s enough, that’s… everything.