GEMINI RISINGS: You used to write poetry in your room at 3:00 AM, now you doom scroll. You used to write short stories, and recite them at full volume for your parents. Now, people say things to you like “Speak up, I can’t hear you..” Or “You always speak so softly…” or “You don’t talk much, do you?” Somehow life does what life does where it hardens the parts of you that made you feel passionate and inspired, it flattened your individuality and creativity - and told you to blend better into society. People talk over you, and you let them. People interrupt you, and you stop talking completely. You started shrinking yourself for the sake of amplifying everyone around you, and people know you as pleasant company but they don’t know that you could write a three hundred paged novel in your head in less than two days time - if only someone left you alone with a pen and paper. Somewhere between wanting to let people hear every mundane thought that floated through your brain, to not wanting to let people perceive you at all - you stopped feeling understood or safe to express yourself and in turn decided not to express yourself at all. You let a friend drone on about a topic with misinformation for an hour, because you tell yourself it’s not even worth the energy of having to correct them in the first place. When did you stop feeling like your words held no weight? More importantly, why do you persist to surround yourself with people who don’t amplify your voice in the first place? The problem was never that you became less interesting, but that you grew accustomed to performing for rooms that only treat themselves like an echo chamber. You surround yourself with people who are only waiting for their turn to speak when you talk, instead of absorbing what you have to say. Maybe the problem was never your inability to be as profound as you truly are - but that you need better friends and better boundaries. Normalize saying “I’m speaking” when people try to talk over you. Buy the notebook. Start the document with no intention of anyone ever reading it. Let yourself ramble, even if it’s an anonymous TikTok page where you post unhinged thoughts without showing your face. It’s better to be disliked vehemently for beliefs you have on a fundamental level, versus liked by people who don’t even know you at all.