For a long time, I was not exactly mistaken.
Rather, I had been tracing only the surface of certain words.
I understood them conceptually.
I could even explain them with some precision.
Yet, it became clear that I had not been living them.
In hindsight, it might have been preferable if I had been unable to explain them at all.
At least then, the discrepancy would have been obvious.
Instead, I occupied an ambiguous middle ground, where understanding functioned as a substitute for embodiment.
To say that something exists is not the same as persuading oneself that it exists.
Existence does not arise from conviction.
It appears, instead, when the assumption of absence is quietly released.
This is not a paradox.
It only seems like one when approached from the habit of effort.
There is nothing clever or contrarian about it.
What remains is simply what had been there all along.
When the insistence on absence loosens, presence becomes perceptible.
But when presence is forced into belief, it remains unseen.
I can now see that, despite having benefited in certain ways, and despite having been perceived accordingly by others, I may have been avoiding something more honest within myself.
Not deliberately, perhaps, but persistently.
Today, I wanted to leave this here.
For no particular reason beyond my own.