The World Feels Like It's Falling Apart

For the past week, every time I check my phone, there’s something new to worry about.

I don’t mean the little things—missed messages, unread emails, feeds that I'll never get to the bottom of. But news headlines, ones that make the air feel heavier. Burning debris, soaring across skies. Hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. Decisions being made by people in suits, thousands of miles away, that somehow manage to reach into my room and rearrange my thoughts.

I scroll. I close the app. I open it again, like it might say something different this time. It doesn’t.

The truth is, the outside world feels like it’s fraying at the edges. And though I don’t say this out loud most days, so do I.

I just graduated. That sentence doesn’t feel real yet. I'll never be a high school student again. Four years of a Spanish class leading into an anticlimactic final exam and now a language I will never speak again.

For months, I looked forward to finishing, being done, and whatever came after. Now I’m technically in the “after,” and I’m not sure it’s what I expected.

I chose to take a gap year. I told people I wanted time to grow, space to think, room to explore. It sounded nice when I said it. Like I knew what I was doing. Mature, even.

But the honest version is less polished. I didn’t feel ready. I still don’t. I signed up for another year of stress. A different kind I've never experienced. Knowing full well the uncertainty. And the chance of losing everything.

There are days when I feel like I’m floating. Like I paused a movie and forgot why. Like I’m waiting for something, but I’m not sure what it is.

I have emails I haven’t replied to. A body I forget to care for. Dreams I can’t tell if I still want. And above all, decisions that I keep hesitating to make.

In the meantime, I do small things. I water a plant I’m trying not to kill. I go on walks, sometimes without music, just to hear the sound of my own footsteps. I think about writing, and sometimes I even try.

And I scroll. The news keeps going. The world keeps unraveling. Something somewhere is always on fire—literal or otherwise. And somehow, it all feels connected to the static in my chest.

There’s a kind of fatigue that comes with not knowing what’s next.

It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It just sits with you, quietly, and makes everything feel a little out of reach.

I wish I had something more profound to say about all this. Some lesson or realization or moment of clarity. Instead, I’ll tell you that I made an egg this morning.

Sunny side up. I flipped it too early. The yolk broke, and for a second, I wanted to throw everything out and start over. But I didn't. I ate it anyway.

There was something oddly comforting about it. Not hope, exactly. Just the quiet act of doing something ordinary, and letting it be enough for now.

I don’t have a big ending. The world feels fragile. So do I.

I’m still here. For just the moment, that’s enough.