Leafahlet #120625| Embracing Loneliness and Ambition

Mona Leafah

I thrive on creating new sentences.

I’m scared.

Not the cute kind of scared, no, not the “lol I jump at horror movies” scared.

It’s the kind of scared that sits in the room with me even when no one else does.

I’m scared of failing.

I’m scared that everything I’ve worked for is built on hope, caffeine, momentum, and trauma responses that look suspiciously like ambition.

I’m scared of being alone in my apartment, of the way silence gets loud, how the walls start whispering versions of my own voice that don’t sound like me.

How my mind can get so busy that the quiet feels violent.

I’m scared of having my own space and still not feeling like I belong in it.

Like I finally got the things I used to pray for: my own place, my own routines, my own life…

and somehow that might make the loneliness echo louder.

Because the truth?

I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere.

Not fully.

Not without shrinking myself or expanding myself or translating myself to fit the room.

And now I’m terrified that having my own things and my own space will just make the hole bigger instead of filling it.

I suffer from more than a few issues, the kind that don’t make good Instagram quotes.

The kind that don’t come with a ribbon or a lesson until months later.

The kind where people say “you should’ve reached out” and I’m standing there with a phone that feels 200 pounds heavy.

I don’t text people.

I don’t call.

I forget.

It’s not that I don’t care…

but actually because my brain has the object permanence of a toddler mixed with the emotional permanent residency of a 90-year-old poet.

Once you walk out the door, I keep you in my heart…

but not in my mind.

I won’t remember you until you come back.

Not because you didn’t matter but because my brain files people under “safe when present.”

And I hate myself for that.

I hate the way my symptoms disguise themselves as personality traits.

I hate the guilt trip I give myself for patterns I didn’t choose.

I hate the way I disappear when I need help the most.

But most of all?

I hate that I’m scared of who I become when no one’s watching.

And maybe that’s why I’m writing this … because if I can put the fear somewhere outside of me, maybe it stops chewing through my edges.

Maybe this is my way of saying: