Welcome to the machine. You wake up. No alarm ringing, no light. Just the dull, painful feeling that you need to function – again. Your body is not a home, but an unrecoverable exception. Your face is a battlefield, somewhere between anticipation and disgust.
You stand up, put some clothes on. Not those you want, but what’s required. Clothing is armor and camouflage at the same time. You want to leave, but first, you need to put your mask on. Voice? Check. Swaying walk? Check. Keep your head down, always down. Safety before pride.
You are not yourself; you are an enigma. A catalogued mistake. An error that needs to be fixed. Welcome to the club of subversives. Your identity is not being; it is a glitch in the matrix. You are visible, but only as long as people hate you. Invisible, when you just go about your life.
Nobody ever taught you how to live. Only how to apologize. For what you are, for what you aren’t, and for what you may become someday. Your skin isn’t tagged, but it is full of scars – caused by stares, comments, and bureaucracy.
Your pronouns are not a decision; they are a cross-exam. Every sentence is a test; every move is a balance act between assimilation and annihilation. Somewhere between “well done” and “off yourself.” The world wants to see you, but please: smile, airbrushed, in technicolor, not in pain. They want your story but not your anger. They want to see your tears, but not your truth.
You are welcome, as long as you remain just a footnote. A project. An example. Not real, but useful.
You speak? Well, please stay kind.
You scream? Now you are a threat.
You stand up for yourself? Now, you are no longer cooperating.
You quietly drown? That’s not worth a headline.
Welcome to the machine. Your body is political, every breath is a statement, your silence is a provocation. People ask you: “When did you first notice?“ And you want to scream. “What exactly? That I was born in a cage? That my skin is too loud, my gaze insincere, my existence an inconvenience?” But all you manage to do is nod. You explain yourself – for the thousandths time. In sentences that no longer belong to you, but to an audience that doesn’t want to see you, only consume you.
You learn quickly: Love is a luxury. Safety is a myth. Visibility is a threat. And pride? A rarity. Dangerous, when you claim it, liberating, when you defend it. You are not strong; you are exhausted. You are not brave; you simply have no choice. You function because nobody else will take over when you stop.
This is not an empowerment book. This is not a soft-to-read coming-out memoir. Not a social-media post claiming “You’re beautiful the way you are.” This is the autopsy of a society that rather complains about too many woke rainbow flags, than question its rules. This is the death certificate of empathy. And you are the corpse, dragged through the village for one last time, so that everybody knows how not to be.
There is no trigger warning. No peaceful message of self-healing. Just the truth and raw skin; only what remains, after they pathologized you. Welcome to your own story. It will hurt. But maybe – maybe – it will remind you that you are still breathing. Because you are still here. Despite all of this.