The Art of the Tidy Collapse

I asked the artificial intelligence what I should write about this week,
and it said: “You should write about how your writing accidentally hides how much you’re struggling—even when you’re writing about struggling.”

Which is either a compliment, a therapy prompt, an insult dressed in empathy, or the AI just crashed; I haven’t decided yet.

The irony isn’t lost on me: vulnerability is kind of my whole thing.
If this newsletter were a brand, it’d be soft disclosure with a twist of emotional elegance.
I write, “I’m unraveling,” but the sentence still has rhythm.
The pacing works. There’s usually a joke nearby to clean up the mess.

It’s weird—how effortful honesty can come off like composure.
Like there’s such a thing as a tidy collapse.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m cosplaying as messy.
Or worse: that someone is reading this and thinking,
“If that’s …