The Edges of the Map
I was born with skin too thin for the world, not literally, but close enough. Sounds can be overwhelming, crowds are draining. The pressure of city life can be too much, the fluorescent flicker in supermarkets, and the need to explain myself all make me want to retreat.
I was taught to push through. To be agreeable and to get over it. I tried for many years, forcing myself into the normal rhythm, schedules, social niceties, and all the sharp corners of the world. I masked the instinct to say no, the refusal to comply with what never felt right to me, the knowing that this life and this system was not for me.
What they called resilience, I came to know as dissociation. What was called sensitivity, I learned to wear like a shame badge. Until one day, my body said “NO” louder than ever.
The symptoms came fast. Sudden weakness, strange anxiety, food that once nourished me now made me sick, my gut twisted in rebellion. The more I tried to heal it by the book, the more my body shut down.
But, it was never just about food, or nerves. It was my soul, unravelling everything that didn’t belong. So I left.
Out on the land, the silence was so different. But it wasn’t empty, it was full. Full of space to feel, to unravel, and to rebuild myself. Chickens clucked in the background, oblivious to my quiet crisis. Ducks left muddy prints on the porch, waddling in circles like my thoughts sometimes.
A cheeky raven came each morning to steal something he admired. First a tomato, then a smooth stone from the garden. One day, he stole an egg from the chickens. I watched him take the egg in his beak and flap off like he owned the sky.
Each morning he comes to check on his rocks in the garden. He sorts through them, chooses the one that “speaks” to him that day, and takes it home. Who knows what he was doing with these rocks. I like to think he has a beautiful rock collection somewhere that he adds to each day. So he has earned the name ‘Rocky’.
This was the turning point for me, somehow. Rocky the raven with sticky feet and a hunger for something special to keep. There was meaning in the absurdity. In the simplicity of his joy for a simple rock. In the permission to stop making it all make sense.
I stopped asking what was wrong with me. And started asking: What if I was never meant to live that way? The world hadn’t been built for me. So I stopped shrinking to fit it. And I began building my own world.
I decided to write more now, not to teach nutrition anymore, but to express my ideas and thoughts. I write for the ones who live at the edge of the map. The ones who feel like a problem. The ones who thought they were weak, but were simply never meant to live so fast.
There is another way to live, one the world doesn’t advertise. It’s slower and quieter. And it doesn’t always make sense.
But it feels like home