I’m actually okay today. Not fake okay. Not I am saying I’m okay so nobody worries okay. I mean genuinely, noticeably better than I was when this fell out of me.
Of course, this is normal for me. It’s how my brain works. I can feel emotionally waterlogged one day and wake up the next with enough room inside me to breathe. That doesn’t mean I was exaggerating then. And it doesn’t mean anything was solved overnight. (I wish.) It only means feelings move, sometimes faster than the circumstances creating them.
And listen… Yes. Yes there is every possibility that by 8:27 tonight, I will be dragged directly back into the icky emotional swamp by one poorly timed text message or a minor administrative inconvenience. My nervous system loves whimsy. It sounds so much cuter if you call it that, doesn’t it?
But right now, I am okay.
And I still want to share what I wrote when I wasn’t. I almost took down the last sad-girl transmission because vulnerability made me want to sprint directly into the void and dissolve into dust and static… But people didn’t turn away from it—or from me— the way I feared they would. So here I am trying something deeply inconvenient: letting this one exist too.
This came from the same place as Sorrow-Fatigue— except somehow even less polished. It is raw-raw. It fell onto the screen without permission, punctuation, or any interest in sounding reasonable. (I have since added the punctuation.)
While I was writing it, I thought it made absolutely no sense.
Then I read it back… And every word made sense.
Then I read it again— outside of the same place as Sorrow-Fatigue— and it still makes sense now.
I think sometimes the truest thing we write is not the thing we carefully explain. Instead it is the thing that escapes before we have time to cross-examine ourself for writing it.
So this is not a current distress signal. Today is a better day. This is simply a record of what it sounded like inside me when “I’m okay” and “I’m not okay” were both true and exhausted at exactly the same time. This is the more unfiltered piece.
Okay, But Not Okay
I wish I could have a conversation with someone who knows what it’s like to have a conversation with someone who is like me.
I hate my Notes, and I hate my Google Docs, and fuck, sometimes I hate Substack because I hate writing my thoughts but never really letting them go.
I hate being asked if I’m okay while not really being asked if I’m okay because no, I am not fucking okay.
I haven’t been okay.
Even when I say I’m okay, I’m not okay. Even when I say I’m not okay, I’m not okay. Even when I say that I know I am not okay but that I’m going to be okay. Even when I say I know I’m okay because everything is always okay, even when I’m not okay—and yes, that is actually a true belief of mine—I’m not okay.
I’m tired of the not okay being okay because I know that it’s okay, and that means I’m okay and will be okay, and that it’s a circle and a cycle and it comes back around.
I’m tired of that circle.
Just stop on the one spot of okay long enough that I forget I’m supposed to always remember I’m okay, even when I’m not okay.
Who cares if I’m not okay if I’m really okay and it’s always okay?
Me.
Because I know what I mean and what I feel, and how great it is to live so positively while, at the same time—stop that fucking shit and let me embrace the negative.
Because sometimes the negative feels better.
Colder and darker, but better.
Not comfort. Just better.
Better because there is no hiding or looking toward the bright side when the bright side won’t turn off the light. It taunts you and torments you because you can’t get there.
I want to stop looking at it sometimes because it isn’t doing anything positive to me. In fact, it is beating me down a little more.
Somehow, it will get closer, and you would think that feels better, but it doesn’t, because the closer you get is not in distance.
It’s in vision.
You cannot cross the bridge because there is no bridge.
Build a bridge.
How do I fucking build the bridge?
That’s where I’m stuck.
Where do I start? Where do I go? Where do I get what I need to build the bridge?
I would just jump in since I can’t find the shit I need for the bridge, but jumping in doesn’t only affect my own life because I’m a mom with kids, and there is not a single decision that exists without having to take them into consideration.
I can’t wait until they grow to jump in, and that’s why I want to build the bridge.
I want to cross the acidic river over the safety of a sturdy and indestructible bridge with my kids, hand in hand.
Not after finding out this or after that. Not after more time to get on track or rid my body of cancerous mutations of cells and reconstruct the body I was born with—and then suddenly have parts of me taken away. Parts of me I’ve always been insecure about and parts of me I can mold to be the way I want them to be.
I will take my imperfections and go and grow now, thank you.
But no.
I’m so tired of waiting and wondering and believing that I can keep holding out to feel alive because I don’t think I can. I’m drowning and suffocating, and it is much too much to take.
It doesn’t matter that I can see it upon the horizon or that I know there is hope anymore, because the hope belonged to me, and when I speak on it, there’s no one even listening to hear what I need underneath.
To be me.
To be free.
To exist as a version of myself no one has ever met—but I have. I do know her, and I want to be her.
I’m ready to go.
To step into whoever it is no one knows while, at the same time, I am still me.
The good parts that are me are also me.
New and old.
Except they’re dying here, and that is what I’m afraid of. That is what I’m trying to escape.
I honestly don’t know how much longer my soul survives this.
And what does that even mean?
A mental collapse?
But does that mean the end of all of me? Or does the brain just literally fry, and I’m institutionalized, like my collapse took it all away from me?
Just another thought and another question.
And it’s scary to think because you’re always thinking.
All day, you’re thinking, and there are so many things you’re thinking—and it’s not just for you.
You think for her and for him and them and everyone else.
That’s not negligent of me because I’m always screaming:
What the fuck about me?
I can’t answer that part, which is why writing it isn’t replacing my desire to converse with someone who is like me.
I’m sick of writing my thoughts in my Notes, my Google Docs, and my fucking Substack.
Love you, bye
💛Thanks for reading Sparkplug Letters:
A Soulbirth Project! There is no neat niche here.
You’ll be reading whatever it is that spills from my brain.
It’s writing that is impossible to fit into one box.
I write the way I talk and I talk the way I write.
If you tend to like this flavor of emotional devastation…
hit subscribe!
Writing takes time, heart, energy, and occasionally my entire nervous system.
It feels slightly weird to say— because of course it does— but paid subscriptions are now available for anyone who wants to support the existence of this thing — not because I’m withholding the thing.
I want to be very clear:
I will not put my writing behind a paywall and the work stays open because I want it to reach whoever needs it.
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If you want to support that, I’ll be deeply grateful.
And if not…you’re still welcome here.
I mean that, truly.
🫶🏻
Brittany, the distinction between feeling better and having the circumstances remain unresolved gives this piece its honesty. The bridge image holds the deepest ache: hope is visible, while the means of reaching it still feel unavailable. Letting the better day stand beside the earlier distress preserves both truths without forcing either one to erase the other. Grateful for the courage with which you shared the record, and I hope trusted people are helping you carry what writing alone was never meant to hold.
Oh, also, My favourite quote in the world is:
“in the end, it’s going to be okay. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
~ unknown