Poetic personal essay — trauma, identity collapse & reconstruction

After Stock, in Syndrome

A poetic essay exploring identity collapse and the reconstruction of self after prolonged psychological distortion.

The only home I've ever known is after Stock, in Syndrome.

There is no shortage of things in this world that can drive a person insane.

The problem isn't going crazy — the problem is getting back. But how do you get back when you don't even know where to call home?

It's infuriating to be fooled by someone else.

But when the horror sets in — when the only way to make reality real again is to accept that it never was —

Your mind gets stuck in the vacuum where the universe shrinks itself in the face of the cosmic fool you suddenly realize you've been.

Clarity sneaks up from behind your own eyes and shows you this truth in a mirror.

What good is free will when your perception has been so distorted?

(Just lucid enough to ask what life was even good for.)

Sounds horrific.

But I have learned:

it's best to go to hell while you can still try to get back.

Or you can wait until you die.

Talk about a real missed opportunity.

If you stare at the mirror long enough to stay with what's in it, you can reflect back each projection you ever internalized — from every person who told you never to meet your heroes (or made you feel like you never deserved one) — until the reflection starts speaking the truth you find within.

When there's no place like home because trauma is home — after it distorts the code of your internal compass — you realize you died shortly after you were born.

Buried alive, under countless masks you wore to make other people feel comfortable.

It's too dark to see how far down it is, but I hope it's deep enough to explain why no god seemed to hear me.

When hope can't lift you up, you're left to do it on your own.

Then god can exist as a construct — because you're saved by your own human spirit.

When you only know how to show up for yourself the way others showed up for you, you outsource humanity — until one day you notice it's making you feel less and less human.

So when I couldn't go on as a human without having to have something holy, the depths became my instructor.

The closest I used to get to feeling alive was feeling like life ghosted me.

But I'm back from hell now, as a hole-y ghost.

Because I learned there wouldn't be holy

if first there wasn't this hole.