The days were endless. Time stretched thin like worn skin, and everything outside felt loud, sharp, disjointed. My thoughts were sprinting laps inside of my skull while my body moved on autopilot, like muscle memory had taken over the business of being alive. There was chaos in the world, and somewhere in me too. A quiet war between the imagined safety of my mind and the brutal precision of reality. That split - that constant duality - has always lived in my own marrow. It hums underneath everything.

That night, I came home exhausted, hollowed out from pretending I fit into a world I’d long outgrown. My body felt too big, too foreign, like I was wearing someone else’s skin. I collapsed into bed without peeling back the covers. The sheets, cold at first, molded to my spine like they knew me. My cat curled into the crook of my ribs - a small, warm creature against the cavers of my chest, purring like it could soothe the bone-deep ache I didn’t have words for. I didn't reach for the weighted blanket. I didn’t need more pressure. I was already suffocating under the weight of myself.

The room was dark - familiar. My sanctuary. My hiding place. My tomb.

And then it happened.
A jolt.
A punch?
No - a beat.
My heart.

It shouldn’t have been terrifying. It's supposed to do that. Between fifty and eighty times a minute. Over a hundred times a day. That’s what human hearts do.

But I forgot I had one.

Somewhere between overthinking and over-performing, I lost track of the fact that I am made
of flesh. That inside this tall, alien body - stitched from bone, blood and everything wrong - there’s a heart. Beating. For me. Without being asked to. Without applause. It kept going. Even when I disappeared. Even when I was so consumed by survival I forgot I existed.

It was still there.
Beating.
Louder than my silence.
Louder than my shame.
Louder than the voice in my head telling me to disappear politely.

And in that moment, I didn't know whether to cry or scream. Because I suddenly remembered what it meant to be alive - and how far I'd drifted from it. How often I'd betrayed my own body just to be acceptable. Palatable. Invisible.

But the heart doesn't lie.
It doesn't shrink.
It doesn't wait for permission

It just beats - 
even when you’ve forgotten how to feel it.

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A little bit about the author :

Name : Moona

Pronouns : she/they

Age : 22

Location : France

My hobbies are writing, acting and modeling. Some of my special interests are dinosaurs, musicals and true crime.  

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