PS C:\> tar -xf Kiss_Me_Then_Break_Me_MP4.zip
Application_Install.exe
I did not used to feel things all the way. I numbed them. That is not an option anymore. Every ounce of grief I am carrying has to go somewhere, and lately that somewhere is my body. Kai Wachi always helps with this. His chart topping smasher “Run” was the perfect fit. This song does what I needed done. It starts quiet and heavy, and then it rips wide open, and so did I.
I did not dance this one to process a story. I danced it to get the weight out of my nervous system before it calcified into something worse. Some days, actually most, the only real tool I have left is hard, heavy, intense physical movement.
That is the application. The rest is the source code.
Source_Code.txt
The open-source code below is free, for you to analyze, modify, and build your own application with.
> the quiet before I knew what was building: soft_open.dat
The song starts slow. Sentimental. The sad sounds of intense heartbreak.
Soft guitar. Gentle piano. A voice that sounds like it is telling the truth quietly before it has the courage to say it loud.
That is exactly where I was standing when I hit record.
Quiet. Heavy. Barely moving.
My nervous system had been on fire all day. Not loud fire. The kind that burns low and steady under everything you do, the kind nobody watching you would ever guess is there. I was not sad about one thing. I was carrying layers of grief stacked on top of each other, old ones and new ones, none of them finished, all of them sitting in the same body at the same time.
I felt like I was crumbling with another wave of nervous system dysregulation, falling off the edge of thinking I was starting to feel normal again.
I felt like I stuck with this nervous system mess, the layers of grief, and barganing with how much of it I may have created for myself. Asking myself if I somehow earned this misery. Did I do this on my own?
I did not know how much weight I was actually holding until the music told me.
> what it costs to feel everything now: no_more_numbing.log
I do not get to numb this anymore.
There is no substance left standing between me and the weight. No drink to soften the edges. No chemical to turn the volume down until tomorrow. Whatever I feel, I feel completely, in real time, with nowhere to put it down.
So I have to move it instead.
That is not a metaphor. That is the actual mechanism now. Grief that used to get poured down my throat and sucked into my lungs now has to get danced out of my body, or it does not go anywhere at all.
I was proud of that record.
I don’t remember much of that birthday.
All I have are pictures of it.
And guilt about what happened in the years following.
This hurts my heart.
💔
> a goodbye I never got to sing out loud: last_night_together.txt
If you want to you can run
You can run
But tell me, why do I feel numb?
Do I feel numb?
If I am honest, part of me was singing this one to alcohol and drugs. Not to the countless people, things, places, events, and activities I have lost or had to leave behind since November. I was singing it to the thing I used to run to every single time my nervous system got this loud.
Think I’m fallin’ off again
Tell me, where did my mind go?
Is it stuck within the mess
Or did I do this on my own?
There were years where I could not tell you where my mind had gone. I would look up and realize I had disappeared again, and I could never tell if I lost myself in the mess on purpose or if it just happened to me while I was not looking.
You and I, we walk a thin line
We grow apart at the same time
Probably should’ve called it at the stop sign
But here we are, in drive
You and I walked that same thin line for a long time. Close enough to lean on. Far enough apart that neither of us was ever really there. I knew where it was headed long before I let myself admit it. I should have stopped the car. I kept driving anyway.
Kiss me like you want to
Please, just one last time
Hug me like you used to
All night, all night
You used to get to hold me on nights like this. Wrap me up until I could not feel anything underneath you anymore. That was the whole point. Not connection. Just quiet.
Love me like we’re not through
Like everything’s alright
And it’s okay to stay the night
There were nights in the past that I still caught myself wanting to invite you back in. One more round. One more excuse to disappear before I have to be present for whatever is actually happening inside me.
Those nights have faded into my past. I don’t reach for the phone to call you anymore.
I am not pretending I never needed you or loved you. I am not pretending the numbing did not work, for a while, in the only way I knew how to survive back then.
But it’ll be the last time
Sorry, my old loves. You do not get to hold me tonight. This is the last time I let anything hold me instead of feeling me.
The last time was January 13, 2024 with alcohol and January 6, 2026 with cannabis (becoming completely chemically sober). Not a molecule of alcohol or drugs in my body since.
> the drop hit and so did I: rupture.exe
“SWITCH IT!”
Kai Wachi ripped it open.
Bass.
Heat.
Explosions.
Release.
No more holding it together.
No more being careful.
I let it all out of my system.
Every ounce.
Gone.
Released.
Switched it into something calm.
> moving pain instead of storing it: discharge.sys
The intense dancing was not performance. It was discharge.
My body took the internal pain and gave it somewhere to go besides my chest, besides my throat, besides the place it usually sits and waits. I moved it out of my system through my body because my body was the only exit left available to me.
That is what I have now instead of numbing. Not less pain. Just a real way to move it.