I see myself slipping. Again. I picture a room—the last floor of my mind. It should be nourished, swept, kept free of cobwebs. The base, the foundation strong enough to hold a multi-storeyed apartment. And yet, it’s a dark room. The lights are always out, not because of the bulbs, but because the wiring is faulty—the thoughts themselves are broken circuits.
In the corner, a candle burns. Its flame is small but powerful, bright enough to torch the whole place to ash. That flicker is doubt. Doubt that refuses to be extinguished, and perhaps shouldn’t be—because what else makes us human? The problem begins when doubt is channeled into the narrative I feed myself. The self-talk turns toxic, its smoke staining the walls, leaving blackened reminders that the room needs to be remade.
I forget, too often, that I’ve already become the woman I once envisioned. Instead of remodelling that room, I try to erase it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. But some invisible pull keeps dragging me back inside. It’s a pattern. My pattern. The one I keep promising myself I’ll escape.
Taylor Swift once said, “Old habits die screaming.” And I feel that scream in my bones. My actions tell one story: she’s making progress. My mind tells another: are you sure? You’ll fall back into the same loop. What makes this time different? It’s like watching a film with botched subtitles—halfway through, they stop syncing. You try to piece things together from gestures alone, but the words betray you. That’s where I live most days: the actions and the narration running on separate tracks.
Even when I say I have absolute faith in myself, I only half believe it. The other half—acidic, undermining—blurs my days into an indistinct haze. I lose track of time. Hours slip away. What was I even doing? Nothing useful, but I can’t remember what filled the spaces either. Days collapse into nights, and I drift.
On a recent drive to an event, hair down, dressed up, city passing in a blur, I spiralled around one thought: I don’t see my future anymore. Moving abroad feels like a joke, even though I still want it. And yet, I want a million other things too. If words alone can create change, why should I settle for the safe option? Why choose “just one thing” when I can merge my loves into a single, impossible whole?
The problem isn’t that I juggle too many projects. The problem is that I don’t trust myself to sustain them. My actions prove otherwise, but belief doesn’t bend to proof so easily. Which is why I loop: delete, restart, delete, restart—when what I need is to simply edit. That is the shape of my self-distrust.
For years, I tied my entire sense of self to work. I still do. I feel most alive in rooms full of readers and writers, when creativity is currency and I’m part of the exchange. I told myself I was only the “best version” of me when I had written that day. When I posted, when I shared, when I created—I soared. On the other days, I told myself I was useless. Worthless. Just another deluded overconfident girl convincing herself she could make it.
And maybe delusion is necessary. To chase impossible dreams, you need a little madness. I know I have it. The harder part has been telling myself: my work is not my worth. That conversation with myself has been brutal.
I told myself I needed hobbies. I needed to step outside of writing. Because when I read, it’s both work and pleasure, and outside of that, I sometimes feel like I don’t exist at all. With friends, I wonder why they keep me around when I feel like I have nothing else to offer. People say I’m self-motivated, and I appreciate that. But is there anything else? At times, I fear I’m a red flag—not because I compare myself to others, but because I shrink beside them, convinced I lack a “personality.” Whatever that means.
This hasn’t destroyed my relationships, but it has seeded questions. What do I want? Which of my dreams deserve to become reality? I know I’m not living my “dream life,” but that doesn’t mean I can’t romanticise this one. I can still live as if beauty is mine to choose, even now.
Because it matters—how you speak to yourself. One cruel, self-deprecating thought is enough to undercut months of work. I don’t know why I don’t fully own who I am. I love being well-read. I love dissecting thrillers, studying the publishing industry, understanding process and market. I care so deeply about craft that I can’t continue writing if I sense I haven’t pushed the idea far enough. I don’t delete my ideas—I reject mediocrity, and start again until it feels right. That’s not a weakness. That’s vision.
Yet I brush it off with humour. I downplay it instead of owning it with pride. And I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a domino effect. Maybe it’s the residue of all those blackened walls in that locked room of my mind.
Maybe the dark room will always exist, but I am done pretending it doesn’t. I can walk in, light the candle, and still choose not to let the smoke choke me. I am more than the doubt, more than the loop, more than the walls I keep repainting. If I am both the wiring and the fire, then I am also the one who decides whether the whole place collapses or whether it finally glows.
Maybe this is what it comes down to: not deleting myself every time I stumble, not treating imperfection like rot that has to be cut out, but learning to carry it forward, draft after draft, step after step. I am not a blank page to be torn out and replaced; I am the same page written over, layered with ink, smudges, edits and underlines. When I choose to continue instead of start over, I am saying I am worth refining. I am saying my work, my body, my life are not disposable. I am saying: I am here, still writing, still dancing, still shaping myself into someone I can stand inside without apology.