The Weight of Belonging

I don’t know how to live in this world.

It moves too fast,

asks for masks I don’t know how to wear,

demands a kind of certainty

I’ve never been able to hold.

I watch people move through it

like dancers who know the steps,

while I stumble at the edges,

always a beat behind,

always out of rhythm.

The rules confuse me.

The noise overwhelms me.

And sometimes I wonder

if I was meant for another place,

another time,

a gentler existence where my heart

would not feel so out of place.

But I am here.

And even in the not-knowing,

I am learning small things:

how to breathe when the weight presses down,

how to stand still when the ground shakes,

how to let softness survive in a world

that worships hardness.

Maybe I will never know how to live in this world

the way others do.

Maybe my way will always look different,

slower, quieter, stranger.

But maybe that is its own kind of life.

Maybe not knowing is still living.

Maybe it is enough to stay,

to search,

to keep reaching for light

in a world that feels too dark.