Joanna Jeanine’s Diary Entry #6

It’s an overcast day today. The sky is a heavy, blank gray—the kind of endless, low ceiling that presses softly against the world, muting every color. There’s a gloom to it, and just enough chill in the air that for a moment, I’m fooled into thinking it’s Autumn. Almost. But I know soon enough it will shift—humidity creeping in, the air growing thick and hot. I can sense it waiting in the wings, ready to replace this melancholic chill with a different kind of discomfort. I woke up feeling ill, a fog wrapping around both my body and my thoughts. There’s heaviness in my limbs that I can’t fully explain away, and my mind feels just as sluggish as the sky. The strangest sensation comes over me: I feel blank, almost as if my face has disappeared—erased, featureless. Nothing to distinguish me, nothing to mark me as me. I imagine myself as one of those unfinished marionettes in a cluttered workshop—no identity, no lines drawn, just raw wood and string, not ready for anything, not even display. Even when people surround me, it’s as though I’m alone, locked somewhere far back within myself, behind rattling thoughts bouncing around a vacant space. I watch the conversations and interactions as if through frosted glass, both near and infinitely far away. I can’t seem to trust my own opinions, let alone voice them—sometimes I wonder if they even matter, or if anyone would care if I did speak up. But why should they notice me? There isn’t anything worth seeing. That’s what it feels like—hollow, indistinct, a silhouette instead of a person. These moments of emptiness come often. Still, it’s not that I’m unhappy with my life in general. If anything, I’m genuinely grateful for how things are. I like the way I live, the patterns and routines I’ve built. But inside myself, I’m restless, dissatisfied. Content with the world that I move through, yet at odds with the person moving through it.