The Fog’s Back wasn’t written from clarity.
It was written from inside something I’ve known for a long time.
The fog isn’t frightening while you’re in it.
There are no feelings to be frightened with.
No racing thoughts.
No loud emotion.
No dramatic collapse.
Just automatic.
Like something takes over.
You move.
You respond.
You function.
But you are not fully present.
It feels like looking at life through tinted glass.
The world is still there.
Rooms. Voices. Time.
But you are slightly removed.
Like a doll in your own body.
A robot following instructions.
When I was younger, during periods of physical and emotional abuse,
The fog would come often.
It wasn’t weakness.
It was survival.
When you cannot escape physically,
The mind finds another way.
You disconnect.
You shut certain things down.
You endure.
Inside the fog, there aren’t many thoughts.
There isn’t panic.
There is absence.
The not knowing comes later.
Later, you realise how far you drifted.
Later, you wonder if you fully returned.
But inside it, there is nothing sharp enough to call frightening.
I used to think the fog meant something was wrong with me.
Now I understand it differently.
The fog was built in childhood.
It formed when I needed to survive.
And it still returns when something feels emotionally unsafe or out of control.
That doesn’t make me polished.
It doesn’t make me untouched.
If anything, it makes me marked.
Fractured.
And I’m not ashamed of that.
I have lived a harsh emotional life.
Of course my nervous system carries history.
Of course it learned to shut things down.
That isn’t broken in the way people use the word.
It’s human.
The fog once protected me.
Now it’s something I move through.
Not because I am fixed.
But because I have been forged.
And now I’m strong enough to own it
And write about it.
Thank you for reading.
Your DislexicPoet 🖤