notes
from purgatory.
it's hot out here!
Have you ever hit rock bottom? I did, I fell so hard and for so long I'd forgotten which way was up. Life was good until it wasn't. First came COVID, and then the storm. Relationships falling and failing like dominoes, from lovers, to friends, to family, all unravelling like threadbare silk.
I called it the great abandoning. Some left, some I had to walk away from once I came to my senses. But when people close to you break your heart in ways unimaginable, you shatter into a million pieces. How can someone who says they love you almost kill you?
And then a question cracked me open
Here begins my journey through the seven terraces of my own hell, take a look
What was it in me that chose them in the first place?”
pride
I’ve always been the loudest in the room not out of arrogance, but certainty.
Self-assured, articulate, the one with the plan, the presence.
artwork inspired by junko
But when life turned feral, sharp-toothed, and unscripted
my pride became a veil,
clouding what I needed to see most.​
It told me I could handle it.
It told me I couldn’t possibly be wrong.
It told me this couldn’t possibly be happening to me.
And so I stood there,
not in control,
but in disbelief, asking the quiet room,
“How did I end up here?”
“Did this really happen to me?”
It’s hard to acknowledge
that the brightest and strongest of us
can falter.
And then… we make excuses.
My pride got in the way of admitting
that I am not indestructible.
I am strong, yes—
but sometimes even the strongest need help.
I needed help.
I needed love.
I needed care.
It’s hard to acknowledge
that the brightest and strongest of us
can falter.
And then… we make excuses.
And that didn’t make me less of a person.
That didn’t make me weak.
So I swallowed my pride
and asked for help.
And that…
was the best decision I ever made.
I envied people for being normal.
For having happier, less complex lives.
My life was never simple.
I longed for peace,
but I rarely sought it.
Instead, I walked into chaos by design.
Because chaos was familiar.
It was what I knew.
It took me years to realize,
I didn’t know peace by definition.
The noise was normalized,
so I called it life.
The hardest battle I ever fought was turning my back on my own nature,
rejecting my environment,
and choosing not to respond.
Not to engage.
Life taught me this lesson
over and over again:
chaos is not normal.
And for the first time,
I had the freedom to define normal for myself.
Sometimes, normal looks like
sitting bored in a corner,
instead of fighting fires
my loved ones created
It wasn’t just about choosing normal.
It was learning to live with it.
To accept the boring, the mundane.
envy
Boredom is essential
Because boredom is essential for the mind.
And in its quiet,
envy dissolves
in ways unimaginable.
wrath
My anger never knocked.
It barged in loud, burning,
often dressed for the wrong occasion.
But slowly, painfully,
I have begun to let go;
of the fire,
of the void,
of the need to punish something
just because I could not name the ache.
It could be the simplest thing
that set me off.
A word, a glance,
something that reminded me of a past mistake
that once cost me dearly.
And so I broke what was tender, to avoid confronting what was broken in me.
And in that moment,
I turned into the gods of the Old Testament,
bringing down wrath of biblical proportions
on those who never asked for it.
But before you fix what’s inside,
you must first acknowledge
that something is broken.
That takes courage.
Wrath can be a powerful disguise.
A tool the weak use
to hide what is fragile,
what is hurting.
Force, anger, unrest, chaos, they are not weapons of strength. They are signals of an unhealthy mind.
Because what cannot be solved calmly, quietly, with patience, is twisted into subjugation when force enters the room.
What could be dialogue becomes my personal theater of lashing out at someone who asked an innocent question
that happened to rub me raw.
And the only way to cure it
is to curb it;
to let go of judgment,
presuppositions,
and bias.
I had to learn that wrath is not a tool.
It is an affliction.
A reaction.
Rage is a poor architect.
It builds nothing.
It only scorches the walls from the inside.
sloth
It not the kind of laziness you can see.
It is the quiet kind, the kind that smiles and says it’s fine when the soul is quietly eroding at the edges.
And I let it go.
Too far.
There were days when I sensed the lines blurring,
when I felt the weight of silence where a no should’ve been.
But inertia is seductive.
Yes , I was lazy.
Not with effort,
but with courage.
And I paid for it
in slow,
invisible ways.
But strength isn’t meant to be exploited for trivialities.
Addressing your discomfort then becomes your prerogative - it is your duty to yourself.
So, Say it out loud.
Because the small things pile up and flare.
And silence only feeds the fire.
My sloth was in the soft refusal to draw boundaries.
I could have but I didn’t.
As long as I could manage it in the moment,
I let it be
It whispers: This is easier.
Don’t make it awkward.
Just absorb it. You’re strong, remember?
let it be, let it be
Speak,
before the silence speaks for you.
avarice
This greed wasn’t mine alone.
It echoed in others
in their struggle to understand
why I wanted to let go
when the world taught us to hold on.
It was hard,
watching them wrestle with the idea of me;
not the version they’d known,
but the one shedding skin quietly,
walking toward change.
A quieter greed,
the kind that clings not to things,
but to people, identities, roles
long outgrown.
And maybe I delayed that change,
procrastinated growth
not because I feared it,
but because I feared who I’d lose along the way.
But change is a necessary betrayal.
I am no longer the person I was.
So why carry the guilt
of staying loyal
to an ideology
my soul has already left?
Even for a moment,
numbness felt easier than honesty.
But one day, in a single, trembling act of grace,
I let it all go.
And it wasn’t just food.
It was the wine,
the drugs,
the “just one more” of everything. A convenient curtain I could pull between myself and the truth.
Not as punishment
but as a reclamation.
Food was my therapy.
But also my shield.
A way to press the emotions down
when they threatened to spill out of me too loud, too messy, too real.
gluttony
Reclaiming my senses,
to sit with discomfort without succumbing to the need to self soothe.
​
Over coming the ebs and flows of my mind and body to build clarity and good judegment.
I still love food.
But now, it doesn’t hide me —
it fuels me.
It energizes me.
It connects me to the present, not an escape from it.
And when my emotions come now,
I let them.
No more swallowing them whole.
lust
I once thought lust was only hunger,
a fire that burned and asked for more.
But pleasure, I learned, is not the enemy, it is where we choose to seek it.
I turned away from the endless wanting,
from the glitter of wealth,
the climb toward names and faces; that never knew my own.
Instead, I searched for smaller lights;
the warmth of morning sun on skin, the quiet gift of evening walks,
a smile unsought, a silence unbroken.
Gods have no need,
animals have no questions.
It is only us humans,
who make life heavy
with reaching hands.
So I began again,
not to collect,
not to conquer. to rest in what is already mine:
to rest in what is already mine:
a breath,
a moment,
a simple peace.
