Sometimes I look at my face and wonder who fast-forwarded my life without asking me.
In my head, the year 2000 still feels like yesterday. Ten years ago, max. But the mirror doesn’t lie. The mirror counts better than memory. It shows interest on time I don’t even remember spending.
There’s a whole decade in my life that feels like a blackout. Gone, erased, unclaimed. People I met, choices I made, things I said… I don’t remember living them. I remember them the way you remember a dream someone else told you. Through Facebook notifications. Through tagged photos. Proof that I existed, without any evidence that I was alive.
And somewhere in that fog, I keep asking, "What went so wrong that I disappeared from my own life?"
Then I remember. I got married.
Not the villain origin story you think this is. It didn’t destroy me. It woke me up. And waking up is not a beautiful thing when you’ve spent your whole life asleep with your eyes open. I had spent over thirty years following voices I never questioned. Treating people like truth itself. Believing without thinking felt like loyalty. Felt like love.
Then someone new walked in. Someone who had no history with my illusions.
And just like that, things started looking… different. Different, just enough to make me uncomfortable in my own skin.
It’s a violent thing, seeing clearly for the first time. Your mind fights it. Your heart rejects it. You start doubting everything. Not just them. Yourself.
Was I wrong all along?
Was I blind… or was I made blind?
And if this is truth, then what the hell was I living before?
That’s when they started showing up.
The dark circles.
Not from lack of sleep. From lack of peace.
They spread slowly. Quietly. Like something rotting underneath the surface.
Every night spent replaying conversations. Every morning waking up with a new crack in an old belief. Every moment of choosing to see instead of looking away.
I didn’t go to therapy. I sat with it. Day after day, I peeled things apart with my bare hands. Thought by thought. Memory by memory. Trying to understand where I ended and where they began.
And the scariest part? Seeing my own life through someone else’s eyes.
Fresh eyes. Unbiased. Untrained to ignore. They don’t miss what you’ve been taught to overlook.
Some truths don’t just hurt. They make you wish you never had the ability to see in the first place. Because once you see… you don’t get to go back.
These dark circles? They’re not fatigue. They’re evidence. They are what happens when generational silence cracks open inside one person. They are what it looks like when you carry things you cannot explain without sounding ungrateful, unhinged, or unfaithful.
People say fix them. Sleep more. Drink water. As if this is skincare. No. This is history sitting under my eyes. No cream can erase it. No filter can soften it.
And I’m done trying to look like I haven’t lived through it. You call it breaking patterns. I call it bleeding quietly so the next person doesn’t have to. You think it’s healing. It feels more like carrying something that was never meant to be carried alone.
So don’t ask me to get rid of them. Don’t try to clean this up for me. These dark circles are mine. Not a flaw. Not a phase. Proof.
You call it breaking patterns. I call it wearing a crown of thorns without ever being forgiven for it. There is nothing holy about what I’ve seen. No purity in it. No salvation waiting at the end of this. Just truth. Cold. Unwelcome. Permanent.
I am not healing. I am remembering.
And what sits behind these eyes… it isn’t something that fades. It doesn’t soften. It doesn’t let go. It stays. It festers. It learns you.
I am not the man I was before I saw it. I am what’s left after the illusion died. So don’t take this away from me. Don’t try to make me lighter than I am. Because if I ever put this down… if I ever pretend I didn’t see what I saw… that would be the real lie. And I’ve lived enough of those.
This… this is the part of me that would make the devil shiver in hell.
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