Ahmed Wagdy
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How Do You Live While Falling Apart
How Do You Live While Falling Apart I wake up every morning inside the same body, yet it doesn’t feel like mine. The mirror greets me with the face of a stranger wearing my features, blinking with my eyes — but he isn’t me. I brush my teeth, tie my shoes, make my coffee — mechanical, precise movements, without life. It’s strange, existing without belonging to yourself. I wait for the day my body will feel like home again, But the days keep passing, and I’m still a guest inside my own skin. There’s a weight that follows me everywhere. Not heavy enough to make me collapse, But just enough to keep me tired all the time. People call it sadness, anxiety, or exhaustion. I call it noise. It whispers behind every thought, interrupts every moment of stillness. I try to drown it with music, with words, with anything that resembles life. But at night, when everything quiets down, Its voice rises. It fills the room, fills the bed. I tell myself I’m fine, That it’s just a phase, that everyone gets lost sometimes. But I know it’s more than that. It’s chaos. Not the loud kind — the quiet kind, Made of small, daily surrenders. You stop replying to messages, You stop explaining yourself, You stop expecting to be understood. And suddenly, you realize you’ve built an entire life out of pretending. I often wonder how people see me: calm, composed, reliable. No one realizes how much effort it takes to keep the mask in place. Inside, I’m negotiating constantly with my thoughts: Don’t say too much. Don’t show weakness. Don’t let them see your hands shake. The rules never end, and the punishment is shame. So I stay silent. I smile when I’m supposed to smile. I nod at the right time. And die a little every time I succeed. Sometimes I wonder: what if I stopped performing? What if I walked into a room and said, “I’m tired. I don’t know who I am anymore”? Would anyone know what to do with that truth, or would they turn away, Waiting for me to go back to the version of me they can handle? I’m afraid my honesty would scare them — And even more afraid that it wouldn’t. There’s a chair in my room that watches me. I know how absurd that sounds, But I can feel its gaze whenever I go quiet. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s my conscience. Or maybe it’s the version of me that didn’t survive last year. Sometimes I whisper to it at night — softly, shyly — and it listens. I tell it about the dreams I stopped chasing, The people I pushed away, The parts of me that still ache. It never judges. It simply exists. They say healing takes time, But no one tells you that time alone doesn’t heal. It only rearranges the pain. Some days, the ache sits in my chest, On others, it hides in my throat. I’ve learned to live with it, The way one learns to walk with a limp. You adapt, you pretend, And convince yourself the limp is just your style. I think what frightens me most isn’t dying — It’s continuing like this. Waking, performing, living While detached from the script of my own life. I miss the days when I could feel, Even the bad feelings. Now everything is muted, Wrapped in cotton, As if my heart is submerged underwater. Maybe I’ll never go back to who I was. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I had to lose my old self To learn how to live without illusions. And yet, I still wish I could meet myself again — The version that believed in mornings, That laughed, That didn’t have to pretend to be fine. Tonight, the room is quiet. Nothing but the sound of my breathing. I sit on the bed, Staring at the chair. It stares back. And for a brief, fleeting moment, I wonder if the chair isn’t really watching me — But I am. I am nothing but a shadow of who I once was. The people I trusted — they’ve already forgotten me. My mind betrays me every single day, whispering that happiness is just a lie I keep repeating to myself. Maybe the life I live isn’t even mine anymore. I keep showing up, breathing, moving, yet I’ve been disappearing in plain sight. And maybe, after all this time, I’m the stranger I’ve been running from.
By Ahmed Wagdy2 months ago in Art
On the opposite chair… no one.
On the opposite chair… no one. Me… I don’t know who I am. Every morning, I open my eyes to myself as if seeing me for the first time. A stranger to me, tired of me. I search for my self among my features, but nothing stays. Sometimes I feel I deserve the universe, sometimes I hate myself as if I were a crime. Nothing is stable. No feeling lasts. No thought remains without turning against me.
By Ahmed Wagdy2 months ago in Confessions
