OBSERVATIONS & OTHER ACCIDENTS

Notes on illusion, intoxication, and the slow unravelling of truth.

These notes trace the journey through the lie often called love — a landscape where intensity can be mistaken for truth, and validation is frequently confused with genuine connection. They observe the subtle shift from charm to warning, how red flags, once invisible, become impossible to ignore, signs of a relationship built not on care, but on illusion.

This is not a love story. It is a timeline of delusion —
an account of what happens when control masquerades as affection,
enacted with dramatic intensity and heightened nerves.

Over time, these pages have traced the gradual peeling away of false belief, the swell of anger, and the slow, quiet retreat of hope.

It is not about heartbreak. It is about awakening. About seeing clearly when the glamour fades, and recognizing what is real, and what is only imagined.

Anatomy of Illusion
Part I — The Hurt

My soul aches.
He’s been impossible, makes me quake.
Been hurting me on purpose
— for that I’ve no mistake.

And then they ask:
But is he hurting you, or are you letting it break?

I’m speaking about someone I love,
Someone I waited for, someone I dreamed of.
Believed in — against all odds above.

But his choices are dragging us into dark places,
And no matter how strong I am, this pain traces.
— Ah, but if it hurts, is it love?
Perhaps not.
Not like this.
Because now, I don’t recognise who he is,
And I can’t love what wounds me, what twists.

I’m sad in ways I can’t contain,
Maybe I need time to heal this strain.
For him to wake up.
For me to breathe.
Because I know what I gave — and still I grieve.

But this —
this I can’t endure anymore,
Not the hurt, not the war.

(…)

But where do I put all this love?
What am I supposed to do with the shove?
Do I accept it — and go on as if this were normal?
Do I look for another, a new form?
But love isn’t something you chase or search,
Love happens, quietly, without a perch.

I feel lost, my voice muffled, restrained,
I confuse feelings, emotions, desires unexplained.
I don’t know how to decide,
I don’t know which way to guide.

All I can do is live, day by day,
Keep my focus, find the way.
As for this unease that’s rooted in my chest —
Let it stay.
I accept it.
I let it be, until it chooses to rest.

Love.
Always love.

(…)

Honestly, all of this exhausts me,
Tired, tired — so tired of what I see.
I need to get out of here —
First this house,
Then this relationship,
And, God willing, this love that won’t appear.

Because it just doesn’t work,
This isn’t living, just a daily murk.
It’s surviving — and barely that,
Caught in the shadows, under this heavy flat.

Part II — The Fog

Letting go is hard, it’s true,
But harder still to wake one day — too late —
And find I never truly knew.

I have to work, yet tears catch in my throat,
Or is it my heart? My eyes? Who can note…
I went for a walk —
In wind, in cold, in rain —
To see if tears would fall, release the strain,
if they’d free themselves, if they’d let me breathe.
And nothing.
Until they do, focus flees.
It’s hard. It hurts. There’s no reprieve.

At last.
Starting with “at last” says so much,
I could almost stop here.
“At last,” I write,
After shedding litres of silent cries,
after brisk walks,
trying to calm mind and eyes.

Anxiety persists.
It’s hard to name what I feel —
Perhaps because it’s new, surreal.
Recent times laid bare the madness.
The chaos, the unravelled sadness.
It goes beyond heart, beyond emotion,
beyond what I thought I could handle with devotion.

What weighs on me is unseen:
What clung to skin, the shutting down within.
What scares me isn’t pain,
it’s what it changed: who I was,
And who I became after the stain.

At last.
I don’t even know if I write to understand,
Or simply resist,
May be just exist.

Part III — The Longing

On the other hand,
I long for something shared,
Someone to walk with me,
side by side,
ready, prepared.
With values like mine,
dreams of their own.
A will to build,
not to break, not to dethrone.

A quiet bond, that brings calm, not strife.
To hold someone close, not from need, but life.
I don’t fill holes, nor mend wounds,
I am a partner, not a salve that swoons.

(…)

Last night of the year. And here I am, writing.
On the TV, Mania de Você.
In my headphones, Adele.
In my mind, chaos settled.
In my chest, pain.
In my soul, destruction.

I never imagined falling this low.
Now I understand those whose will won’t show,
for whom life becomes unbearable, bleak,
whose hearts are shattered, whose voices can’t speak.

I force myself to drink a glass of wine,
hoping to numb the pain.
I bought a cheese board, ready for
a solitary yet abundant New Year’s Eve.

I escaped from everyone a few hours ago.
From myself, I’m still escaping.

(…)

It’s been a year since I don’t left the house.
A year since I detached from the world.

I am sad.
Alone.
Disappointed.
Disbelieving.
Without faith.
Not in God — in Him I hold, in love’s wraith.

I speak of belief in love.
If this was love, is this what they call love?
How will I summon courage to rise above?

Inside me, emptiness.
Days spent in tears,
not because I want to, but because it adheres.

The crying insist, so I isolate even more.
Because who would understand this?
Who would comprehend this darkness?
How does one explain darkness?

Part IV — The Realisation

(…)

And I let myself stay, too settled, too still,
Accustomed to discomfort, against my own will.

I became accustomed to the ultimate discomfort —
loving someone from afar,
watching, powerless,
their self-destruction.

Hoping someone would shift, rearrange.
One of the worst decisions in love, in life,
to anchor hope in another’s strife.

(…)

I let myself live in such a mad fantasy,
until I came to senses, finally free.
I began to question everything I knew,
about life, about love, about myself,
my (in)ability to discern.
Only wrong decisions,
mistake after mistake.
Will I ever learn?

(…)

The hardest part wasn’t seeing the curtain fall,
but realising I was the one holding it.

One day, it will all make sense in my head.
Or perhaps it never will, and I’ll rest instead.
Today, I’m not there, but I take it day by day,
certain I’m doing all I can to find my way.
Some days I cry a lot,
some I breathe with ease.
No longer trapped in your torment,
finally appeased.
It will take as long as it needs to forget —
Because I won’t carry a trace of hurt, not one regret.

Today, I try to forgive myself.
In its own time.
Everything takes its time.

Part V — The Aftermath

(…)

What hurts even more is the betrayal,
The feeling of being stabbed, a piercing trail,
by someone you once loved,
eyes closed, blind.
A trust given fully,
now cruelly confined.

The mind sees and tries to understand;
The heart feels, yet can’t command;
And then both slip into a blur,
blindness, amnesia — memories stir.

The sting of longing, the heartbreak of deceit,
the throbbing ache of disappointment, bitter and sweet.

And heartbreak? How does one endure such pain?
What does one do with torment that will not wane?

What a mess — unable to lift the weight,
to toss it away, to reclaim fate,
so I can carry on in peace, at last,
with what remains of a life once surpassed.

Ah, no.
Today it is too much,
I ask time to help me heal, its gentle touch.
And my ego — may it, at its pace,
swallow the torment, leave no trace.

Accepting that it was nothing
hurts much more than accepting
the everything it could have been.

Part VI — The Residue

I try to write all I wanted to say,
but nothing comes out, it just slips away.
I suppose it’s no surprise,
so much said, so many tries.

I said it all — far too often, too much.
What needed saying? What left untouched?

God, I did so much, I did too much still,
so what’s left to say?
Or do?
Or will?

From my side, only silence remains.
My voice lost to shouting, echoing pains.
Now, instead of words, there are tears.
A lot of weeping.
A lot of weeping.

So many days longing for nightfall,
the only time I find peace at all.
Night is my ally, holding my grief.
And as I sleep, I forget, brief relief.

(…)

Fuck.
What a mess —
still writing these lines.
Every reason to forget, 
yet your shadow confines.
Haunting my mind, my heart, my soul.

But which soul?
I no longer have one.
It’s gone, you stole.
You destroyed it in the worst way.
The horror of what you could do,
every single day.

So why do I still cry? Still bleed?
When all I wanted was to be freed?

Last night, I dreamed of you.
You lied, you hid.
I was wrecked — drowned in tears.
Then I woke up.
Just a dream —
But also the truest thing I’ve ever seen.

Part VII — The Collapse

Bloody stupid heart. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

(…)

I was going to write this phase, blah blah blah,
But what phase?
This isn’t a phase.
It’s years.
Years of me, of you,
And a “we” that never truly grew.
As if there was ever a “we”.
There was only me, dissolving,
so that we could become one.
And we both know: that left me undone.
A lost battle, a field of scars,
Wounds, trauma, pain.

And in the middle of this emptiness deep,
A brutal kind of longing I keep.

For what we never were,
for what never came to be.
A deep ache for the imagined,
a life I blindly believed.
Against all evidence,
despite the weight.
Carrying illusions
that sealed my fate.

Part VIII — The Unsaid

(…)

There are things words can never quite hold —
Feelings, sensations that slip through the fold.
Resisting names, refusing the tame,
Defying language, beyond any claim.

They say love is real
when no words can contain its zeal.
With you, I could never explain the storm,
Not for the man you were, nor the life you form.

So why?
Psychology may shed light,
but what good is it,
when words fall short of the fight?

Part IX — The Frost

In the meantime, a presence stirred.
People always do, yet this one occurred.
But this time, I sat and listened —
No rush, no escape, nothing to christen.

My heart feels locked tight,
and sometimes I fear it may never ignite.
Bloody hell, I’m not even sure I want to feel.
Only time will tell, only time can heal.

There’s a coldness in me that brings fright.
Where is the fire? Where is the light?
Don’t I long for arms to hold me again tight?

But I’m afraid to fall back into grief.
Seeking comfort, yet fearing relief.

I’ve lost count of lonely nights in bed.
Yet, only a few weeks ago,
(since I accepted this was truly over)
my mind cleared the dread.
Guilt-free, drama-free, letting space spread.

Until then, I slept only on my side,
leaving the rest untouched — frozen by your tide.
By all that was left unsaid,
by the emptiness that haunted my head.

These passages, written roughly between 2021 and 2024, were originally composed in Portuguese. In translation, some lines were adapted to preserve rhythm and lyrical flow.