thoughts grind like train brakes
the racket of being real—
quiet still won’t come
What bothers me?
That I’m bothered at all.
It’s the double-layered ache that twists under the ribs—
not just the sting, but the shame of feeling it.
I remember growing up in a part of town where the concrete held heat in the summer and the stairwells smelled like old socks and fryer oil. Most of us had names that didn’t fit neatly in official forms. The kind of names that made teachers pause. Or smirk. Or skip.
We played football on gravel. Swore fluently in three languages. Learned to run fast, not just because we were young—but because sometimes you had to. Cops. Fights. The kind of threats that wore Adidas tracksuits and held eye contact just a second too long.
I remember once, standing in the hallway outside our flat, hearing a neighbor scream and then throw a chair down the stairwell. The noise echoed in spirals. My mother didn’t flinch. She just turned up the volume on the TV and told me to pass the salt.
We ate soup while something shattered below.
Back then, it felt like everyone was always angry at something.
The system. The noise. The way the bus was late, again. The way you had to wait longer if your accent was wrong. The teacher who pretended not to see your hand up. The landlord who never fixed the heating.
Anger wasn’t an emotion. It was air. You breathed it in. You held it in your lungs until it hardened into silence.
I used to think I’d outgrow it.
That adulthood would bring some kind of shield, a gentler world, a softer ceiling to rest beneath.
But here’s what bothers me now: I’ve left all that behind, mostly.
The noise, the stairwell, the smell. I live in a quiet neighborhood now. The shoes are lined up. The kettle works. There’s a balcony with plants that don’t get stolen. The floor is wooden and creaks in pleasant ways.
And still, I get bothered.
By people who chew too loud.
By emails I don’t want to answer.
By the slow drip of a faucet that I haven’t fixed.
By a dream that ends just before the good part.
By a text that says “seen” but never gets answered.
And then—I get bothered that I’m bothered.
Shouldn’t I be over this by now?
Shouldn’t meditation, therapy, travel, books, love—shouldn’t they have cured this already?
I try to explain it once to a woman I’m seeing. We’re sitting in a park, drinking coffee from a place that grinds their own beans and calls their sizes “ritual” instead of “medium.”
She listens. Doesn’t interrupt.
Then she says, “Maybe the part of you that feels broken isn’t broken. Maybe it’s just the part that remembers.”
That stays with me.
Because maybe the real wabi-sabi of it all is this:
The cracks aren’t flaws. They’re features.
They show that something passed through.
A story. A survival. A scar.
The boy who ducked out of fights. The teen who flinched at slurs. The young man who learned to speak quietly, because being loud got you labeled.
He still lives here. In me.
And sometimes he’s tired. Sometimes bothered.
Sometimes he just wants to sit without needing to heal.
So I let him.
I breathe with him.
We pass the salt.
That’s what I’ve learned: it’s not about not being bothered. It’s about holding the feeling without letting it spill everywhere.
It’s about knowing the world doesn’t owe you ease, and loving it anyway.
Last week I watched a bird land on the railing outside my balcony. It stood there a long time, longer than birds usually do. Its feathers were ruffled. Something about it looked disappointed.
Maybe it had flown all morning and still hadn’t found what it was looking for.
I didn’t move. Just watched.
And eventually it flew away.
That’s how the bother sometimes goes.
You acknowledge it. You don’t flinch. You let it rest beside you until it finds its own wings.
And when it’s gone, you’re left with a strange kind of quiet. Not peace. Not yet.
But maybe the space where peace begins.
If this stayed with you longer than it should have—consider subscribing. I send these out quietly, the way memories return: unexpected, but true.
life 
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