A short story essay: Lost in Transient Thoughts

 My mind has become a transit station for fleeting thoughts, each arriving and departing too quickly for me to fully grasp. They slip away before I can observe them, leaving me feeling ungrounded, lost, and drowning within myself. I can’t keep up, and in the wake of their passing, I am left with silence. All I seem able to talk about is myself and what I experience, and even those words feel exhausted—worn thin from overuse. There isn’t much left to say, yet there’s so much I long to do, so many things I yearn to experience—things that might pull me out of this cycle of transient thoughts.

But perhaps the answer isn’t escape. Maybe I need to embrace the fleeting nature of these thoughts, to learn to wade through their currents rather than be swept away. I wonder if, in doing so, I might find my voice again—the words I’ve been searching for and so much more—in the experiences I long to have.

Right now, I have no questions to ask, no ideas I’m eager to share. I feel hollow, as though I have little left of myself to give. Yet I sense that if I could immerse myself in the things I dream of doing, I might rediscover my voice. The more I do, the more I will learn. I will find questions worth asking, thoughts worth expressing, and a voice that feels authentic. My throat, metaphorically constricted by silence, might finally feel free.

Or maybe the answer lies within. Perhaps I need to embrace the silence, to sit with it until it reveals my voice again. Yet this silence often feels like a double-edged sword. It may offer clarity for me, but it has a tendency to hurt those around me. My retreat into silence, my absorption in transient thoughts, leaves others feeling shut out. It’s not that I’m uninterested; rather, I’m simply unphased. Very little seems to affect me anymore.

This detachment leaves me questioning my own humanity. I lose myself in the silence and the present moment, becoming less reactive, less responsive—less human. I feel like a blank canvas, my intuition the only paintbrush left to define me. I am guided by impulses, by a vague sense of what feels right in the moment, but these choices don’t always paint a picture that others can understand.

When I get lost in the silence, people assume I don’t care. But the truth is more complex. The nothingness that envelops me is all-consuming, yet paradoxically comforting. It cradles me in its warmth, erasing lingering thoughts, silencing the voice that once defined me. In its embrace, I am stripped of the fragments that make me who I am, surviving instead on the memories others have of me. To them, I may seem indifferent, disconnected. In reality, I’m just unphased—tired, perhaps, but even that explanation feels overused and insufficient.

I wonder what it would feel like to truly be moved by something, to not be weighed down by this relentless fatigue. Maybe that’s why the nothingness has such a hold on me; it’s easier to succumb to its pull than to fight for a way out. But I long to hold onto thoughts and let them linger, to find words that articulate my heart’s desires. I want to rediscover the part of me that knows what I need and how to voice it.

Once, someone asked me if my needs were being met, and I realized I didn’t even know what those needs were. This revelation left me feeling as though I’m standing on the precipice of something vast and undefined. I sense that change is possible, but navigating this void feels overwhelming. Perhaps I need help to find my way—to escape the nothingness or, at the very least, to make peace with it.

For now, I linger in this liminal space, waiting for clarity. Whether the answer lies in doing more or in embracing the silence, I’m determined to find it. Somewhere within the transient thoughts, the silence, and the nothingness, I believe my voice still exists. I just need to learn how to hear it again.