When the Devil You Know Is More Comfortable Than the Heaven You Don’t

Essays & Poems Series

This post is for literary purposes only. It is not advice or prescriptive.

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There is a choreography to despair. It doesn’t stumble, it glides. It organizes itself into ritual: habits, explanations, Pinterest-board mantras... sometimes even a scroll of raccoon videos on Insta. You wake up, feel the ache, name it something poetic, and move through another day rehearsing pain like it's a role you once auditioned for and now perform nightly. You are not lost. You are curated.

We’ve built systems for this. Entire linguistic frameworks that legitimize spiritual stasis. “I need space to be,” “I’m doing inner work,” “I’m honoring my seasons.” These phrases are used like zoning permits for avoiding the inconvenient truth that discomfort, left unchecked, becomes luxury housing for your lesser self.

You go online searching for insight and leave armed with semantic armor: trauma-informed, attachment-aware, astrology-aligned. But there is no insight, only insulation. The vocabulary is exquisite. The self-deception, even more so.

A thought repeated daily becomes infrastructure. Twelve months of revisiting the same heartbreak isn’t healing, it’s hoarding. Emotional clutter, dressed up as depth. We mistake our spirals for soul-searching, our inertia for introspection. But really, we’ve just designed a psychic UX that re-routes all potential exits into another reframe, another justification, another reason to not act.

The brilliance of avoidance is that it feels responsible. You schedule therapy. You journal. You slow down. You keep people away. But nothing changes. Because the storm has become your rhythm. And rhythm, once familiar, starts to sound like truth. You call it growth. It’s choreography.

Comfort, ironically, is often the enemy of progress. Not because it’s evil, but because it’s efficient. Comfort learns your triggers and builds around them. It crafts alternate narratives. You don’t say “I’m afraid.” You say “I’m honoring my healing.” You don’t say “I refuse to risk.” You say “I’m protecting my autonomy.” All true in theory. All paralyzing in practice. A perfect purgatory with mid century modern furniture tailored to your intellectual measurements.

So what are you protecting, really? What story are you still fully committed to? The trauma is real but so is your resistance. You say, “I’m not sure what to do next,” but you know. You just won’t do it. Because doing it would mean confronting the unpracticed versions of yourself; the ones who don’t sound smart, centered, or quote-worthy. The ones who might actually mess up healing by finally moving.

Those versions wait for you in a locked room. You've been keeping the door shut with curated grief and designer excuses. Open it. Let them talk.

Think of your unread books. The ones you bought during the “new chapter” moment that never arrived. You don’t read them. You display them. A quiet shrine to a self still in beta. You tell yourself you’ll start after one more week of mental decluttering. But the calendar is tired of hosting your alibis. The same goes for the messages, and manuscripts you promised yourself to read, but never did.

So here’s the revolt: let’s play a game I call “Individuation in Reverse on Groundhog Day.” Pick one fear and stop accommodating it. Not with heroic ambition, just with a small, violent act of unfamiliarity. Text the person. Apply for the thing. Say what you mean. Allow yourself to love the person you’re in love with. Show it. Let awkwardness bruise the air around your well-managed persona. Because growth does not feel good. It feels like dying badly and waking up confused in a better life.

You will not be ready. You will crave the quicksand. Your discomfort will plead for recognition. But do not host it. Let it knock. Let it cry. Just don’t rehearse with it. You are no longer available for auditions.

Healing is not a ritual. It is a rebellion. And sometimes the most sacred act is refusing to ornament your suffering.

Welcome to the dry land.

Zoë’s Dress Rehearsal, Again

You wear your ache like vintage linen

creased, curated, folded with care.

You tell me healing takes time,

but all I see is time taking your truth.

You light candles for the ghosts you named

but never buried.

Their shadows are now decor,

and grief’s become your house style.

I read your messages:

paragraphs with no verbs.

You’ve designed a syntax for staying still

and called it transformation.

This isn’t bravery, Zoë.

It’s choreography.

You’ve mastered the pivot, the pause,

the dramatic sigh between “almost” and “not yet.”

You say you're doing the work

but I know a shrine when I see one.

It’s not sacred. It's rehearsed.

You mourn in perfect lighting.

Here's what hurts:

You’ve turned avoidance into art

and invited me to applaud.

But I won’t clap. I won’t sit front-row

for another showing of "Becoming."

Your healing has a soundtrack

but no movement.

A stage but no exit.

And I’m tired of reading your grief

like it’s a syllabus.

If you’re ready,

strip the choreography.

Miss your cue.

Trip your lines.

Come as you are: unpublished,

unscripted,

unafraid.