E.S. Poetry & Writing

What are your biggest challenges?

My biggest challenge as a person is myself, which sounds poetic until you realize it means I wake up every day already in a fistfight. My brain is not a helpful narrator. It is a hostile commentator with a megaphone, a clipboard, and a lifelong vendetta. I don’t have thoughts so much as internal performance reviews that I am consistently failing. There is no off switch. There is no appeal process. HR is still me and deeply unqualified.

As a writer, this is inconvenient but productive. As a human being, it is a full-time demolition project. I don’t struggle to create. I struggle to allow anything I make to live without interrogation. I have “just right” OCD, which means I will rewrite something until it feels aligned with a standard that I cannot define and will never meet. If one word feels wrong, I will tear the entire piece apart like a raccoon discovering drywall. The result is excellent writing and a personality best described as “permanently on edge.”

This process has cost me sleep, hair, and whatever delusion I once had about being chill. I am extremely dedicated to my craft in the same way people are dedicated to destructive coping mechanisms. The work improves. I unravel. We call it balance.

My mental health, broadly speaking, is a haunted house with a very ambitious renovation plan. I am constantly trying to improve myself. Heal myself. Optimize myself. Fix myself. I am one self-help book away from snapping. The cost of improvement is so high it feels like a scam, but I keep paying it anyway, convinced that the next upgrade will finally make me tolerable to exist inside. I chase growth like it’s going to apologize to me one day.

I use humor as a coping mechanism because if I don’t laugh, I will simply sit still long enough to feel everything at once, which feels medically inadvisable. Sometimes life is not funny at all. I will still make a joke. This is not bravery. This is emotional duct tape. If something is devastating, I turn it into a bit. If it’s unbearable, I sharpen it into sarcasm and hand it to you like a party trick. Please clap. Do not ask follow-up questions.

I am deeply obsessed with the concept of being enough. I know enough is fake. I know it doesn’t exist. I know it’s a social construct held together by vibes and trauma. None of this stops me from chasing it like it owes me money. The other side of enough is not peace. It is a concrete slab. I did not step onto it carefully. I sprinted, launched myself headfirst, cracked my skull, and lay there blinking like, “Wow. That seemed unnecessary.” I will absolutely do it again.

I hurt myself more than anyone else ever could. I am my own worst critic, coach, abuser, and motivational speaker. I apply pressure exactly where I am already wounded, then act surprised when it hurts. I demand constant improvement and then shame myself for needing rest. I tell myself I should be better by now without ever agreeing on what better actually means. I rewrite my life the same way I rewrite my work, convinced that if I just cut enough, refine enough, suffer enough, I’ll eventually earn permission to exist without flinching.

It’s all fun and games until it’s not fun and I realize I was never playing a game. At some point, the jokes stop working. The humor slips. The coping mechanisms creak. And I’m left holding the weight of my own expectations like a weapon I forgot I was pointing inward.

And yet. I keep going. I keep writing. I keep trying. Not because I’m well-adjusted, but because something feral in me refuses to quit. If I’m going to live inside this brain, I might as well turn the chaos into something useful. If I’m going to bleed, I might as well bleed onto the page. And if I’m going to laugh while doing it, it’s because laughter is the only thing my brain hasn’t figured out how to weaponize against me yet.