I’ve been feeling a sense of displacement over the last couple of days. It’s been sitting on my chest, heavy and insistent, waiting for a moment to erupt.
It erupted today, and I’m struggling to find solid ground beneath me again.
There’s also a sense of foolishness lingering around me. Foolishness for having believed something was different this time. That something fundamental had changed.
It feels like I’ve been pulled back a year, and the same unsettling feeling has returned to my core. Distrust has crept back in, and fear is drawing closer with each passing hour.
There’s anger too, sharp and bitter, as I think back to just two months ago when my outlook was bright with possibility. I was filled with genuine excitement, believing in forward momentum. Now I feel the opposite—like I’m standing in the wreckage of that hope, wondering how I let myself believe again.
The hardest part isn’t the disappointment itself. It’s the shame that comes with it—the internal voice that whispers I should have known better, that I was naive to trust, that hope was the mistake.
But perhaps that voice is wrong. Maybe the mistake isn’t in hoping or trusting or believing things could be different. The real error is in thinking that one setback erases all progress, that falling back means we never moved forward at all.
I don’t know how to reconcile the person I was two months ago with who I am today. But maybe I don’t need to. Maybe both versions are true: the hopeful one and the hurt one. Maybe displacement isn’t about being in the wrong place, but about being between places—in that uncomfortable transition where we’re no longer who we were, but not yet who we’re becoming.
For now, I’ll sit with this heaviness. I’ll let the eruption settle. And when I’m ready, I’ll decide what comes next—not because the fear has disappeared, but because I’m still here, still capable of asking what to do about it.
That question itself is a form of hope.
