Diary I: The Distance

Morning again.

The light in the kitchen is soft but cruel; it finds everything I try to hide. I make tea and stand beside the window, watching the steam rise, then fade. The cup feels warm in my hands, but I wait too long, and it cools. Sometimes I think I’m like that tea, warm for a while, then forgotten.

I’ve stopped recognizing myself in the mirror. It’s not only my face, but it’s also the space between what I see and what I feel. I can look for minutes and still not connect the reflection to the person inside. My body feels borrowed, like something I was asked to carry but never allowed to claim. Some mornings, I stand naked and stare until it becomes unbearable. It’s not shame exactly, but a numb kind of distance, as if the body and I agreed long ago to live separately.

There’s a piece of linen folded on the chair in the corner. I bought it months ago, thinking I would make something from it. Now it just sits there, quietly breathing with the room. Sometimes I run my fingers over the folds; it feels softer, more alive than I do.

When I was younger, I believed art could save me. If I stitched enough, painted enough, created enough, I thought I could sew myself back together. But lately, everything feels false. I start, then stop. I make marks, then erase them. I tell myself it’s part of the process, but I know it’s fear, fear of meeting myself again, fear of what I might see.

In the afternoon, I go for a walk around the block. I watch how people move, the ease of their bodies, how naturally they seem to belong inside them. I wonder what that must feel like. The air is heavy with late sunlight, pressing against my chest. I notice I’ve been holding my breath. When I finally exhale, it hurts a little, like a muscle that’s been asleep for too long.

At night, the apartment feels smaller, and the silence hums. I lie in bed and feel the weight of my own body, heavy, unfamiliar, almost separate. I think about the word distance, how it can mean both safety and loss. I’ve built so much of it around me that even my skin feels far away.

Sometimes I dream that my body is made of fabric, thin, translucent, folded over and over again until the shape disappears. Maybe that’s what I’ve become: a piece of cloth someone once wore, carrying traces of what’s no longer mine.

Still, something in me stirs, a quiet pull, almost defiant. A thread tugging from somewhere deep. I don’t know what it wants yet, but it feels alive. Maybe this is how beginnings start, not with certainty, but with the smallest tremor, the faint realization that the distance is no longer enough.

Tomorrow, I might unfold the linen.

Diary I: The Distance, New York, 2025-2026 © Negin Mahzoun