Saw the little mail icon blinking on my phone, reflex to open it up and it's the old work email still sitting there on the screen mocking me with its nothingness and that's the part that gets me, the habit, the automatic reach for a thing that doesn't even exist anymore, like trying to scratch an itch on a limb that isn't even there, except the itch is real, it's the itch of wanting to be needed, the itch of wanting to be productive, the itch of wanting to be valued and all those things feel like the same thing now, just different shades of the same hunger and i keep trying to fill it up with tea and walks and vision boards and therapist appointments, but the hunger is still there, a low thrumming under everything, a constant reminder that i am not enough, not doing enough, not being enough, and it is so exhausting to keep fighting this ghost.