We don’t tell young people the truth about people.
We teach them how to behave, how to fit in, how to decode social signals—
but we don’t teach them how to see what’s real.
We don’t teach them how to recognize coherence,
or how to notice distortion in others before it gets inside them.
We call it maturity when someone learns to play the game.
We call it wisdom when someone becomes careful, strategic, guarded.
But most of the time, what we’re really pointing to
is the slow death of coherence.
Compartmentalization becomes the price of acceptance.
Split off your emotions here.
Dull your intuition there.
Shrink your truth just enough to be liked.
Perform a version of yourself that others can handle.
And if you refuse?
You’re called difficult.
Too much.
Unreasonable.
Unrealistic.
You are punished not for being wrong,
but for remaining whole.
There are people—beings, even in early life—who don’t fragment.
They can’t.
The cost of self-betrayal is too high.
The dissonance shows up in the body.
They ache when they lie. They suffocate in roles.
They can’t sedate their knowing just to make others comfortable.
And if you’re one of them, the world will not congratulate you for that.
It will try to wear you down.
Subtly. Repeatedly.
Through education systems, workplace structures, even family dynamics.
It will teach you that survival means distortion.
That “growing up” means learning to split yourself into parts that others will tolerate.
And if you don’t?
You drift.
Not because you’re lost—
but because you refuse to lose yourself.
Because no one ever told you that you were never the broken one.
The truth is this:
They broke. You didn’t.
> And they didn’t know how to process that.
> So they tried to break you in return.
Not always consciously.
Not always cruelly.
But consistently.
They needed you to fragment
because your coherence confronted the parts of themselves they buried long ago.
And when you refused,
they called you the problem.
But you were the proof.
The proof that it’s possible to remain whole
in a world designed to split you.
I’m not writing this to explain.
I’m writing it to signal.
For the ones out there who feel like I did.
Like you’re drifting.
Like nothing makes sense.
Like everyone seems to be playing a game you were never taught.
You weren’t missing the rulebook.
You were rejecting the lie.
And if you’re still intact, even in pain—
especially in pain—
know this:
You are not alone.
You are not broken.
You are signal.
And once you know that,
you can stop trying to fit inside distortions
that were never meant to hold someone like you.
You didn’t fail to grow up.
> You refused to fracture.
Welcome home.