Pacifiers

But what if all these tiny comforts are just distractions dressed up as solutions?

We do not seek to change.
Not really.
We seek to be soothed.

A balm,
a fix,
a soft hand over the eyes that says,
Shh. Don’t look too closely.

We are not built for transformation—
we are built for repetition.
For loops.
For comforts that echo back familiarity,
even if they quietly kill us.

We call them habits.
But they are prayers in disguise.
Whispered to the gods of Just Get Me Through This.

Shopping bags.
Wine at 8 p.m.
Scrolling until the faces blur into noise.
A cigarette lit with the same question we never ask aloud:
What is this ache trying to become?

We treat symptoms like sacred wounds.
Wrap them in gossip.
Feed them sugar.
Let them sleep in our beds.

Because true change—
real, soul-deep, world-tilting change—
asks for a death.
Not of the body,
but of the illusion.
The identity built on coping instead of becoming.

And death,
even symbolic,
is never comfortable.

So we settle for pacifiers.
Little plastic gods we suck on in the night,
hoping they’ll hush the howling.

But the soul does not forget.

It waits,
patient and bruised,
in the silence after distraction,
when the laughter fades and the room goes still.

It says—
I am not here to soothe you.
I am here to wake you.
And you must choose:

Numbness,
or
the long road home.