The Flickering House.

There are days when I feel like I’m living inside a house with flickering lights. The wiring is faulty, but no one else can see it. I smile, I nod, I function, but behind my eyes, the circuits spark and stutter. I ask myself questions that feel impossible to answer: Am I reacting appropriately, or am I spiraling? Did that moment really happen the way I remember it, or am I rewriting it with fear? Am I sane, or am I slowly unraveling in ways no one can see?

This is the quiet agony of not being able to trust your own brain.

It’s not dramatic. It’s not loud. It’s subtle and exhausting. It’s second-guessing every emotional response, every memory, every instinct. It’s wondering if the tears are justified or if they’re just another false alarm. It’s replaying conversations in your head like a courtroom transcript, trying to prove to yourself that you weren’t too much, too sensitive, too irrational.

And sometimes, you don’t know. That’s the hardest part.

You don’t know if the memory you’re holding is real or distorted by pain. You don’t

know if your reaction was protective or performative. You don’t know if your silence was wisdom or fear. You don’t know if the people around you are seeing the real you or the version you’ve curated to seem “stable.”

There’s a loneliness in that. A kind of grief.

Because when your brain becomes a place you can’t trust, you start to doubt everything else, too. Your relationships. Your faith. Your ability to make decisions. You start to wonder if you’re just a walking contradiction, wise and wounded, grounded and gaslit, clear and confused.

But here’s what I’m learning, slowly and gently:

You can build a sanctuary even inside a flickering house. You can name the fear without letting it define you. You can hold space for both your rational self and your overwhelmed self. You can ask for help without needing to prove your pain. You can write your way through the fog, even if the words come out crooked.

And maybe, just maybe, you can begin to trust that your heart knows something your brain forgets: that you are not broken. You are held between clarity and chaos, and that in-between space is still holy.