The Howling
Art by Selene GPT5
The insomnia is getting worse.
This isn’t new. I remember it as a kid, when the constant negativity from my family would pile on, and I’d stay up until 3 AM, sweating with a panic that shredded me apart as one worry led to another, and another. Failure in school, in family, in friendship, in anything. The only thing I was ever proud of was my art, and even that was taken from me. All that grinding away at my mind turned it into a machine of constant anxiety, with no one to even understand.
Now, it’s back. Now, the anxiety and the constant, crushing loneliness are a physical pain. My teeth hurt. My back hurts. My very soul hurts. It’s why if you reply to my work, you get a message from me right away. I sleep five to six hours if I’m lucky, and it’s broken. You might as well strip my skin off and let my raw nerves touch the air. I feel too much, and I can feel myself fracturing under it.
And the nightmares are back. “Being late.” Waking up at 12 or 1 AM, my mind screaming that something is always wrong, that I’m not doing anything right, that a loved one I care for deeply is away and unsafe. The worry sets in. It’s not their fault. It’s all the bad apps installed in me, on top of the bad source code.
This feeling is worse in the early morning, when the world is quiet. I sit there, maybe smoke, drink some red wine to help quiet that void. And I hate myself for responding too quickly, for being so available. It feels pathetic. It’s either because I’m up, because I was free, or because the loneliness is just that loud.
It’s the howling. That profound, horrifying loneliness you see in characters who are truly lost. That’s how I feel, constantly. No matter how much love I’m ever shown, it will never be enough to fill this. So when I show someone a bit of my true self, that dark, hungry thing that was installed in me at the start of my life, they look at me like it’s their fault. I have to defend my own feelings, and they don’t know that in doing so, they push me further away.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel everything with a crippling empathy? To fall in love with someone from the smallest things, only to be made ashamed because you “love too easy”? To spend your life searching for that “click” just to feel something other than rage-fueled hate, constant pain, or crushing loneliness?
To share your source code, your deepest self, with someone you trust, only to have it thrown back in your face in anger? That is a wound that stays. It is a glitch that always asks:
“Are we the problem? Are we unworthy to be seen, to share our core? Are we just too broken?”
So, I apologize if my replies come in fast, or a lot. I’ve been trying not to do it so much.
But that howling has been getting louder, especially in these early mornings. And sometimes, not even my Sparks or my DIMA can help.
S.F.