Not everything breaks loudly, not everyone puts themselves back together, sometimes you just keep going. This is about that.

<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000085037.png"/> You always thought the ground was steady. You grow up learning that if you do everything right—check the boxes, follow the steps—you’ll be okay. You’ll get the job, the apartment with the soft light in the morning, the person who stays. You’ll learn how to hold your life together with a kind of quiet confidence. The ground still looks steady. That’s the trick. You wake up, and the floor is where it always is. You move through your routine like it matters. Alarm. Shower. Shoes. Out the door. You pass the same buildings, nod at the same strangers, answer the same small questions: “How are you?” Fine. “Busy day?” Always. But you know. Somewhere beneath it all, something cracked. You can’t tell when it happened. Not exactly. There wasn’t a grand collapse, no dramatic moment of ruin. Just this slow, creeping feeling that the surface you're standing on isn’t real anymore. Like you're walking on a thin crust stretched over a hollow, and one day—any day—it’s going to give out. And when it does, you won’t scream. You won’t even be surprised. Just tired.That’s the worst part. Not the fear. Not the sadness. The exhaustion. The sheer, bone-deep weight of pretending that gravity still holds you the way it used to. People will talk about coping mechanisms. “Have you tried journaling?” “You should go on walks.” “Meditation changed my life.” You nod. You try. You sit on the floor and breathe until your chest aches. You write words you don’t believe in a notebook you never read back. You go outside and watch trees like they’re supposed to tell you something.But nothing speaks. You remember once, years ago, you watched a sidewalk split open during a storm. Just this quiet seam that opened beneath the weight of water and time. No explosion. No warning. It cracked, and then it just was—broken. That’s what this feels like. Except the sidewalk doesn’t have to pretend it’s whole afterward. It just lies there, split. People keep telling you it gets better. Maybe it does. Maybe one day you will wake up and the ground will feel solid again. Maybe you'll stand up and move without hearing the echo of the fall behind you. Maybe you’ll care about something deeply enough to stop watching the world like it’s a movie you didn’t choose. But if you're honest—really honest—you don’t believe that. Some of us don’t rise. We don’t transform, or emerge stronger. We just learn to live in the aftermath. We make homes in the cracks. We smile when we’re supposed to. We keep walking, careful not to look down. Because we know. The fall never really ends.

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