28/12/2025
You and I are not the same.
And there are many days I am deeply grateful for that.
You learned how to copy.
How to paste yourself into shapes that fit.
How to call it adulting, success, normal.
You learned early that silence is safer than honesty,
that shrinking yourself is the entrance fee to belonging.
So you complied.
And now, as a grown human, you silence yourself —
and call it maturity.
Fear rules you.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
Through judgement.
Through whispers.
Through the need to label what you cannot place.
And then there is me.
I do not want your life.
I do not want your rehearsed smiles,
your curated outrage,
your borrowed identities held together with approval.
I do not pretend.
I do not decorate lies and call them boundaries.
I am free within myself — uncomfortably free —
and yes, that unsettles people who survive by masks.
I speak when something must be spoken.
I do not insult — I name behaviour.
You make it personal, because truth feels like an attack
when your identity is built on avoidance.
So you judge me.
You recount the one time — once upon a year —
when my patience ended and your comfort did too.
You forget the warnings.
You forget the honesty.
You forget the many moments I tried to speak softly
before truth learned to burn.
And that burning?
That is not cruelty.
That is acid meeting a counterfeit self.
Am I hard? Yes.
Do I sometimes not want to human? Absolutely.
Do I call people stupid?
Let’s be precise.
What do you call doing the same thing over and over,
expecting a different result,
while liking posts that quote Einstein
and pretending insight equals change?
If I’m honest, calling that stupidity is kindness.
The alternative diagnosis is far less flattering.
Then there are those who drape themselves in ALL-THAT —
labels, furniture, gifts, aesthetics —
mistaking accumulation for substance.
Do I like beautiful things? Of course.
But I chose something else.
I chose a sanctuary.
I chose mouths to feed instead of rooms to impress.
And no — insanity is not choosing meaning over appearance.
Insanity is mistaking the appearance for meaning.
What exhausts me is not being misunderstood.
It’s believing — again and again —
that if I speak one more time,
someone might finally hear.
Can you hear me?
I am the Watcher.
The Observer.
The one who sees patterns where you see personalities.
Even I can get lost in the pressure to conform —
but conformity would kill a soul shaped like mine.
“Stay inside the lines,” they said.
“Hide in plain sight.”
Why?
Why must I become smaller so you can feel larger?
When did managing your discomfort become my responsibility?
I cannot make you feel guilty.
You grew that emotion yourself
and buried it where self-reflection should live.
I cannot make you anxious.
That wiring was installed long before we met.
I cannot make you feel inferior —
and honestly, I’m still waiting for someone
to explain how that’s even possible.
I do not create your reactions.
I reveal their source.
And yes — I dare.
I dare to say that book-knowledge without embodiment is cowardice.
That wisdom requires skin in the game.
That observation without honesty is just another hiding place.
Did you catch it?
The Watcher.
The Observer.
I see you.
I simply refuse to become you.
And that —
that is what you cannot forgive.
© The Velvet Hammer
