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so must you.

will i survive a world that misunderstands me? yes. you will and you have. that’s not what matters. what matters is whether you survive the misunderstanding of self. and the answer is no; you won’t and you don’t.

unfortunately, when the world misunderstands you, you carry double. you endure punishment, over-utilization, under-utilization, impostor syndrome, exclusion. lots of uncomfortable things. but when you misunderstand yourself, eventually, you disappear.

you become the ferrari running a bus route or showing up to home depot for bricks and lumber. you become a golf cart losing her mind trying to survive the highway or the flurry of formula 1. when you misunderstand yourself, you erode who you are beneath the legibility you adapted to survive. and sometimes, you do need the years as fish out of water. to see if you can grow legs or if maybe you always had them. fine. but do not linger in legibility. do not insist on control. do not make it your responsibility for limited systems to read you accurately.

so take back your walks. take back your showers. you do not have to rehearse the explanations that will never be heard because they were never actually owed. you can stop explaining to them and explaining to yourself. we already know that detachment and indifference are extremely uncomfortable in the body.

but the horrors persist, and so must you.