You Are Here, Unfortunately

This is not a healing journey.

This is a user manual for the confusing floor plan that is me.

You’re holding an atlas of one extremely unreliable narrator:

coordinates scribbled in eyeliner, margins full of crumbs and panic.

Welcome. Try not to trip over my coping mechanisms.

COVER PAGE: “YOU ARE HERE”

On the cover there’s one of those shopping-centre maps.

A red dot glows: YOU ARE HERE

which is technically true,

except “here” is:

• slightly dissociated,
• hungry but “too tired to eat,”
• pretending to be chill while mentally rehearsing every social interaction since 2004.

The rest of the map is missing.

Someone tore it off to write a to-do list and then ignored the list.

That someone is also me.

LEGEND (ABBREVIATED, OUTDATED, IN DENIAL)

Every map needs a legend.

This one is less “legend” and more “warning label,” but close enough.

• ⚠️ Yellow zones → places I pretend I’m fine.
• ☠️ Black zones → conversations with myself at 3 a.m. Do not enter without snacks.
• 💬 Blue lines → internal monologue, unfiltered, looping.
• 🧷 Dashed line → path of “I’ll deal with it later,” disappearing into the fog.
• ★ Star symbol → things I actually like about myself. Rare. Endangered species.
• ✂️ Strikethrough text → previous versions of me, deprecated, still haunting the system.

You will find all of the above layered badly,

because I never learned to use transparency in this emotional Photoshop file.

SCALE: 1 OVERTHINK = 10,000 REALITY

At the bottom of the page it says:

Scale not to be trusted.

One minor event

(a text with “k.”

someone using “…” instead of “.”

a friend saying “we should hang out sometime” and then vanishing)

expands exponentially until it covers the sky.

On this map:

• A 3-minute silence becomes a continent of catastrophe.
• A typo in a message becomes a region of perceived stupidity.
• One honest compliment shrinks to the size of a postage stamp.

The geography of me is not Euclidean.

It is made of spirals.

Distances are measured in “how long I’ll obsess about this.”

Spoiler: it’s always “too long.”

PAGE 1: THE CARTOGRAPHER IS BIASED

In the corner, tiny print:

Map compiled by: Me

Methodology: vibes

Peer review: none (obviously)

The mapmaker is also the subject.

Conflict of interest: 100%.

When I sketch myself, I exaggerate:

• the craters,
• the fault lines,
• the sinkholes that might swallow anyone foolish enough to love me.

I edit out:

• the small kindnesses,
• the quiet consistencies,
• the mornings I got out of bed when everything in me screamed don’t.

If this map feels unfair,

please take it up with management.

Management is also me.

She is overcaffeinated and underqualified.

PAGE 2: OVERVIEW OF THE ARCHIPELAGO OF SELVES

The “Self” is not one landmass.

It is an unstable cluster of islands,

constantly rearranged by tectonic mood shifts.

Main islands on this chart:

1. Productivity Peninsula

Where I pretend to be a responsible adult.

Coffee flows in rivers.

Calendars bloom in neat, colour-coded orchards.

Locals speak fluent “No worries, I’ll get that done.”

There is a recurring earthquake called Burnout.

2. Anxiety Archipelago

Hundreds of tiny islands:

• Did I say the wrong thing Island
• They secretly hate me Atoll
• I am behind in life Reef.
• Each is the size of a thought and the weight of a planet.

3. The Desert of Emotional Delays

I don’t feel things here.

I take notes for later.

On the dunes:

“process this at some point”

“deal with this next month”

“you don’t have time to be sad today.”

Spoiler: there is never a tourist season for those feelings.

They accumulate like un-read emails.

4. Queendom of Fantasy & Hyperfixation

Population: me, three fictional crushes, and seventeen unfinished projects.

Time moves differently here.

Two hours of writing feel like five minutes.

Five minutes of contentment feel illegal.

Most of my favourite maps were drawn here.

None came with instructions for returning.

5. Swamp of Self-Perception

Foggy, sarcastic, low visibility.

Signs read:

• “No one cares, but also everyone is judging you.”
• “You’re too much, but also not enough.”
• “Have you tried being normal?”

Footnote: normal is a myth invented to sell deodorant and wedding packages.

INTERRUPTED FOOTNOTE: ABOUT PAST VERSIONS

On the bottom margin, someone scribbled:

Note: previous maps exist. None are accurate.

• Age 7: I thought I was a dragon.
• Age 13: I thought I was defective.
• Age 20: I thought I was a genius who just needed “the right moment.”
• Age 30+: I think I am a bug-riddled beta release with surprisingly good patch notes.

Every version insisted:

“This is the final form.”

Every version was wrong.

The self is a file that never stops updating,

even when you scream at it to stop downloading new trauma.

PAGE 3: ABSTRACT DIMENSIONALITY (WELCOME TO THE BACKROOMS)

The physical map is only one layer.

Hidden underneath: the abstract grid.

The axes are labelled:

• X-axis: How performative I’m being
• Y-axis: How much I believe my own performance

In the far corner, someone added:

• Z-axis: How close I am to messaging “sorry, I’m weird” after being authentically myself.

Plot any moment of my life

and you get a coordinate like:

(high performance, low belief, dangerously honest)

This point recurs often.

It is called Tuesday.

PAGE 4: TOPOGRAPHY OF COPING MECHANISMS

The map tilts.

We see elevation: peaks and valleys of how I deal with existing.

High ground:

• Hyper-Competent Mountain

I climb it when I’m terrified you’ll see me as a mess.

From up here I send emails, hit deadlines, make jokes.

The view is spectacular.

Oxygen is scarce.

• Peak Self-Awareness

Rarely reached.

On clear days you can see the patterns,

the wounds,

the inherited scripts.

On cloudy days you only see memes.

Low ground:

• Valley of Doomscrolling

Population: me and the last three hours.

I call it “keeping up with the world.”

The world begs me to go to sleep.

• Cave of Selective Isolation

Comfortable, echoey.

I cancel plans here with “so sorry, I’m exhausted.”

Sometimes it’s true.

Sometimes it is code for “my nervous system has declared bankruptcy.”

The contour lines are labelled in units of:

how much I’ll pretend this is all a joke

vs

how badly I want someone to read between the punchlines

PAGE 5: ADMIN DISTRICT OF IDENTITY

There is a whole region devoted to paperwork of the soul:

• gender forms half-filled
• career plans version 8.2
• aesthetic boards for lives I will never live
• drafts of messages starting with “this is probably oversharing, but…”

Here, the streets have names like:

• Impostor Avenue
• Intersectionality Lane
• “I’ll reinvent myself next month” Crescent

Under flickering office light, clerks stamp documents:

• [APPROVED] - you don’t fit in just one category
• [REJECTED] - your need to be understandable to everyone

The abstract dimension here is bureaucracy:

trying to file myself, label myself, make myself legible.

In the corner is an unlabelled cabinet.

Inside: everything I haven’t figured out yet.

The drawer is jammed.

INTERMISSION: USER GUIDE FOR VISITORS

A rectangular box appears, like in a board game.

HOW TO TRAVEL THIS MAP WITHOUT DYING

(A guide for friends, lovers, strangers who inexplicably care)

1. Do not trust the scale.

I exaggerate my failures and minimize my joys.

2. Landmines are rarely about you.

They’re old stories exploding on new ground.

3. If I give you a tourist map that shows only the cute parts,

assume there are unpaved regions I’m ashamed of.

4. If you get lost, ask.

I am bad at being known,

not unwilling.

5. Bring snacks.

Emotional cartography is hungry work.

Fine print:

Travel at your own risk.

I will absolutely write a poem about you.

PAGE 6: DIMENSION OF DIGITAL GHOSTS

Flip the page and the paper glitches.

Now the map looks like a UI.

Tabs open across the top:

• [HOMEPAGE: PRESENTABLE SELF]
• [ALT: CHAOTIC GROUP CHAT SELF]
• [DRAFTS: UNSENT CONFESSIONS]
• [ARCHIVE: PEOPLE I ONLY EXIST TO ONLINE]

Each profile is a layer:

• The polished biography with reasonable adjectives.
• The unhinged meme dealer who sends cursed content at 1:37 a.m.
• The quiet “seen at” status in apps where I don’t talk, just lurk like a nervous satellite.

Zoom out, and it resembles a network of glowing dots:

messages that never got a reply,

posts that aged poorly,

photos of a face that is not quite how I feel inside.

The abstract dimension here is versioning:

I fork myself into multiple branches,

test them in public,

merge what survives back into the main.

There isn’t one real me hiding behind the others.

There’s just the composite:

a messy average of every self I’ve ever trialed.

PAGE 7: THE LABYRINTH OF “SHOULD”

Near the centre of the map sits a labyrinth.

Entrance sign:

YOU SHOULD BE BETTER BY NOW.

Inside:

• “You should have healed from that already.”
• “You should know what you’re doing with your life.”
• “You should be kinder, sharper, calmer, louder, quieter.”

The corridors rearrange themselves whenever I think I’ve found the exit.

Each “should” is a corridor drawn by someone:

• parents,
• culture,
• algorithms,
• people I crushed on once in 2009 and still apparently rent mental space to.

At the very, very centre

there is a tiny, stubborn room labelled:

WANT

It’s small.

Messy.

Smells like stage fog, printer ink, and late-night noodles.

Inside, the map redraws itself

according to what keeps me alive instead of what keeps me acceptable.

PAGE 8: NOTES FROM A FAILED GODDESS

On the edge of the page, there are annotations.

Some written in neat handwriting, some in all-caps panic.

You were supposed to be extraordinary.

Instead you are anxious with good WiFi.

Is this it?

Is this… enough?

The abstract self here is not a place,

but a ratio:

dreams held : dreams enacted.

I worshipped a version of myself:

• the one who wrote masterpieces in one sitting,
• answered every message thoughtfully and on time,
• never froze in the doorway of a party,
• never lay awake replaying the phrase “no worries if not” and wondering if it sounded desperate.

She exists only as a constellation:

bright points of possible futures

I keep plotting on dark nights.

I am not her.

I am the idiot stargazer on the hill,

trying to connect the dots with shaking hands,

sometimes drawing nonsense shapes,

sometimes accidentally tracing something true.

APPENDIX A: INVENTORY OF GLITCHES

To assist any brave explorers, the map concludes with a brutally honest legend of faults:

• Tendency to joke when sincere answer is loading.
• Latency in replying to affection.
• Memory that hoards humiliation and discards praise.
• Chronic belief that everyone else got the “How To Human” map and mine was printed wrong.
• Reverse clairvoyance: perfect foresight for worst-case scenarios only.
• Never quite convinced I’m real, but extremely invested in snacks.

Side note:

Despite all this, the system remains operational.

Glitching.

Rebooting.

Drawing new lines in pencil,

hope always written in the same ridiculous colour: neon.

APPENDIX B: WHAT THIS MAP DOESN’T SHOW

No map is complete.

This one especially.

It does not show:

• the times I laughed so hard I forgot to hate myself,
• the exact moment a friend’s message pulled me back from the ledge of some invisible cliff,
• the slow, ridiculous work of unlearning cruelty toward my own reflection,
• the way my chest feels slightly bigger when I write something honest and don’t delete it.

Those moments are too small for cartography,

too fleeting for legend.

They’re like glitches in the despair matrix,

pixels of grace.

You can’t locate them.

You can only notice,

in hindsight:

I didn’t vanish. I crossed something.

FINAL PAGE: HOW TO READ THIS WITHOUT FIXING IT

On the last page:

INSTRUCTIONS TO USER (ME)

1. This is not a contract.

You are allowed to redraw.

2. The messy parts are not design flaws.

They are evidence: you survived blueprints no one would have chosen.

3. You are not obligated to turn every wound into a scenic viewpoint.

Some places can stay unphotogenic.

4. When you feel lost, stop asking, “What’s wrong with the map?”

Try, “What if there isn’t only one route?”

Handwritten at the bottom, smudged with something that might be coffee

or something that might be relief:

If someone gets hold of this map and still wants to visit,

do not apologise for the terrain.

Guide them, if you can.

Walk with them, if you want.

But remember:

You are not the map.

You are the entire shifting, stubborn country,

still growing new coastlines

every time you dare

to exist out loud.

Capisce?