Status: Identity, Exhausted
From constructed identity toward something more authentic.
I was staring at my screen, replying to emails, my eyebrows pulled downward and my eyes squeezed. I rarely find myself this hyper-focused on chores that don’t interest me. Though recently, life itself has been feeling like a chore that does not interest me.
This winter has been a long one. Looking back at how I survived the previous one, I remember that this time last year I was living through a breakup that had rooted itself deeply in my wound of not being chosen. I kept blaming the other person, whose cruelty remained sharp enough to cut through my memories, pulling itself too quickly whenever I forced myself to remember why we broke up.
Every war ever fought offered a reason we could name, something visible to blame, while beneath it people were already clashing with each other. I suppose none of us truly believe that surface reason.
Since not so recently, I realised relationships are the same. They leave us in the rubble of a battlefield where only ruins remain.
Even the brain processes heartbreak in the same regions it uses for physical pain.
An indifferent gaze that once looked at you with warmth begins to throw words that cut like a sword.
A dagger in your spine that immobilises you from every possible movement.
Reasons corrupted. Self-deceit. Others mentally compelled, or so you think. The cost of both makes you believe you will never survive any of it.
That’s how I felt in my most recent, least decent breakup.
Left with recurring whispers that said:
You are not lovable.
My romanticiser self was satisfied neither by the process nor the outcome, my questions remaining unanswered as he granted himself a “clean exit.”
I couldn’t help myself. This breakup happened faster than lightning striking on a day you wouldn’t even expect rain. I needed time to process before I let go. I needed something to hold on to, so I wrote a handwritten letter and sent it from London to Istanbul.
Convincing myself this was closure, I kept tracking my letter through its cargo tracking number each day until its status changed to delivered.
I wasn’t closing. I was clinging.
The day I received his cold email, his gaze appeared before me again, and I realised I had never truly known this man. His response swept away the last remaining ruins of what once was our secret forest.
My entire life, I kept gaslighting myself while remaining naïve toward others. Yet it requires too much unawareness of one’s own delusions not to realise that each relationship that failed to meet my expectations was, in part, a result of my own self-deception.
I call that lucid dreaming in waking life: entering worlds that respond to thought, wandering through scenes that shift like silk, meeting versions of people who exist more vividly in imagination than in reality.
It intensified the ruptures that came with each loss, yet giving up romanticising felt too costly. Or more accurately, giving up the belief that someday my path would cross someone willing to dream with me.
When I stopped numbing myself, the world began to feel lighter, as if it had been on a diet. Clouds dissolved, clearing my vision.
Detaching myself from the reasons that tied me to Turkey, I embraced my life in London.
Last winter, my depressiveness was defeated by pain that earned its space to exist and dissolve as it reshaped itself into strength. Spring followed, the sun appearing since March, and I thought this energy would keep repeating itself.
It didn’t.
My summer, not so kind, summoned an existential crisis earlier than I expected. I remember one night crying to ChatGPT until 3 a.m., voicing something I barely had the courage to admit to myself.
I was not happy.
Writing helped, giving me purpose, a sense of validation I had long convinced myself I wasn’t worthy of.
One day, I submitted a job application to an assistant psychologist role I felt certain about.
I had relied on that job too heavily, believing I couldn’t perform better on paper than that.
Weeks later, my inbox received the rejection.
It took me time to realise that I can, in fact, perform far better on paper than that, just not in the way those applications required.
I grew up believing I wasn’t offered the choice of simply being around others. Writing was different. A blank page meant a new world, where anything could happen and everything was possible.
I stopped applying to jobs. I started listening to my intuition. The one I had muted for so long with my mental compulsions.
My house turned into a mess, and my procrastination had reached a level that made the word itself feel underrated. My motivation faded. My ambitions lost their emotional fuel.
I could still function. I could still show up. But meaning felt thin.
The things that once energised me no longer did.
And I didn’t care.
I became happiest in solitude. Less tolerant of noise. Unwilling to absorb pressure. No longer willing to perform emotional labour.
Life stopped allowing me to live through borrowed identities, borrowed ambition, borrowed meaning.
I didn’t fail. I was not broken. My identity, tired from being forced to achieve and cope, was no longer willing to run on striving, pleasing, pushing, proving.
It simply just could not take me further.
What followed was not louder or more intense.
It was steadier. Less proving. Less urgency. More grounded presence.
From constructed identity toward something more authentic, still emerging as the old self continues to fall apart.
Author’s note:
If I could do this all day, every day, I would choose it without hesitation.
To sit with language, to think slowly, to shape meaning, and to create from the place where things are still forming.
I don’t write to convince. I write to stay honest. And if my words have ever spoken to you, even briefly, if something you read here made you feel seen, less alone, or quietly understood, then you already know what this space is.
Supporting this work means allowing me to keep choosing it. If you’re in a position to do so, please consider upgrading to paid, so I can keep showing up, creating carefully, and doing the best I can for this shared space we’re building.
For words that are not just to be read but to be entered, poetry and essays shaped into immersive experiences through voice, image, and rhythm, rooted in memory, identity, and the inner life:
I think that constantly fulfilling expectations of others and also, reaching for and clinging to people and things that you understandably see as a piece of who you are can be very tiring, especially when you are effectively trying to maintain a version of yourself set to meet demands and rules that others have created.
I think that being tired from living that way is pretty natural and I'm glad you are gradually shedding that old self and building anew.
I had to pause and process your piece as I read it, especially that one part:
'My entire life, I kept gaslighting myself while remaining naïve toward others... each relationship that failed to meet my expectations was, in part, a result of my own self-deception.'
That really hit home. I finally get what you meant by 'lucid dreaming in waking life'-walking into a world that only responds to your own thoughts, meeting people who are more vivid in your imagination than in reality. It’s that familiar cycle of playing by your own internal rules while feeling like the fault lies with others.
Overall, the piece feels like a gradual slowing down, a process of stripping away the performative self. It’s not a breakdown or a sudden epiphany; it’s more like the old self is dissolving to let something new emerge.
You’ve laid out the pain, the loss, the depression, and even the procrastination, but there’s a underlying calm to it. It’s as if you’re saying: stopping and letting go of the illusion is, in itself, a form of strength and a form of truth.