Resident on the Shelf: Notes from an Experimental Brain

Voices? Noise? Perhaps hallucinations. It’s 9 AM. I’m supposed to start the day.

But I wasn’t like this last night.

At night, a river opened in my head—steady, strong, overflowing. Words poured through my fingers; thoughts spilled like ink across the page. I was electric. Ideas multiplied, split, twisted into stories. Delusions of grandeur? Maybe. But in that moment, I was limitless.

At night, there is permission to be different. The pressure to perform, to look composed, to answer questions, melts away. I no longer have to hide my chaos behind a mask. Instead, I am free to wander inside my own brain’s labyrinth without interruption.

My brain, which races and sputters when the sun is up, calms its frantic beats after dusk. The night turns the internal noise from a disruptive storm into an orchestra—wild but harmonious, with rhythms I can follow.

Maybe it’s because the night reminds me of solitude, and in solitude, I can hear my true voice. I can write without censoring myself, create without worrying about the “right” way, dream without limits.

And so, while the world sleeps, I am awake in my own way—alive with possibility, fueled by the quiet magic of night

Then comes the morning.

The tide rolls out. The ideas vanish. My energy retreats, dragging the remnants of my nighttime self with it. I wake up as someone else. The person who writes novels at midnight is gone, and in her place is a girl standing in front of a mirror, unable to choose an outfit, unable to start the day.

I stare at my reflection.

Distracted.

Drifting.

I try to focus, but my mind unravels.

Could it be OCD? Bipolar disorder? Maybe one. Maybe both.

The obsession isn’t in me—it’s sitting across the room, on a shelf, staring at me. It watches me with an expression I can’t quite name—disdain? Mockery? Or worse: victory. I don’t know anymore. But what I do know is this—whatever it is, it has power. It moves me like a puppet, speaks in my voice, pulls my strings.

“What do you think?” it says. “Shall we redo the scene?”

I whisper back, “Get out of my head.”

It smiles.

The truth is, I don’t want to keep fighting it. But I also don’t want to give in. So, I exist in between caught in a tug of war between clarity and chaos.

My mind? It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t shut off. Not even for a second.

Sometimes I think it’s running on Windows 95. Slow. Laggy. It opens old files—things I didn’t mean to remember—gets stuck, crashes, restarts. Then shuts down for no reason.

But at night, my brain is different. At night, it’s alive.

That’s when I plan everything. I’ll wake up early. Learn Italian. See my friends. Write the next chapter of my novel. Work on my social media page—even though I still don’t know what that page content is really about. All the ideas arrive like gifts, each one glowing with possibility.

Then morning comes. And I cry.

Because I can’t decide what to wear.

Because the sunlight hurts.

Because all my plans seem absurd and distant and too much.

Because I don’t know which version of me is waking up today.

And just like that, the day collapses.

The night remains untouched.

So I try something new. I bring my chaos with me to breakfast.

I take my coffee outside, sit on the porch. I invite Anxiety. Restlessness. Obsession.

We talk.

They ask me how I’m doing.

And I don’t know how to answer.

It depends.

Which version of me is running today’s software?

The planner or the dreamer?

The doer or the drifter?

Agitation chimes in, smug:

“I’m not your enemy. I’m just the microphone. I amplify whatever you feel.”

I want to scream.

I wasn’t planning to.

But I can feel it bubbling in my chest.

Then Obsession interrupts the moment:

“Don’t forget to check the gas after the coffee boils.”

My body tightens.

My vision blurs.

I stand up fast.

My hands are shaking.

And I scream,

“You feed off my weakness, but I won’t let you.”

They whisper to each other:

“We only let her rest at night… so we can come back stronger in the morning.”

That’s when I understand.

Every time I fight them, they learn.

They adapt.

They grow stronger.

So what do I do?

I try to ignore.

Once.

Twice.

Deep breath in.

Hold.

Release.

But inside, something’s tearing.

Because they leave me alone only when I’m too tired to fight.

They return when I’m weak.

They thrive on my sleeplessness.

They bloom in the daylight.

I am officially the flip.

On the surface—hypomania.

Underneath—chaos with a voice.

A voice that writes and sings and dreams.

I am both storm and silence.

To others, I appear one way.

Alone, I’m someone else entirely.

And somewhere in between, I’ve lost track of who I really am.

Is it the foolish brain that forgets?

The brilliant one that creates?

The broken one that collapses under pressure?

Or the playful one that laughs with her ghosts?

Sometimes I feel like I came into this world with one job:

To keep pleasing the dragon.

To keep feeding the fire inside me that never dies down, just shifts color.

Some days I want to escape it all.

To walk away from the shelf and its cruel laughter.

Other days, I accept the chaos.

Invite it in.

Sit with it.

Because maybe, just maybe, I’m not alone in this.

Maybe I’m not one person—maybe I’m two.

Maybe even more.

One version of me makes my bed.

Another writes my story.

Another knows how to talk to people.

Another one hides when the doorbell rings.

And the best part?

They all know me.

They never ask me to explain myself.

So yesterday I wanted to escape them.

And today, I’m accompanying them.

Strange.

The contradiction doesn’t scare me anymore.

I watch it.

I laugh.

And my laughter echoes through the house like music.

Louder and louder, until it lifts the blanket off my head.

Until I rise.

Until I get up and start my day from scratch.