Buffering

They keep asking me

what system I think is broken.

Healthcare?

Capitalism?

Public transport?

And I say yes.

But that’s not the one I mean.

I mean the electrical grid under my skin.

The wiring that used to hum politely

now flickers like a faulty streetlamp.

My nervous system—

once background infrastructure—

now runs emergency alerts

at 3 a.m. for no reason at all.

Fight or flight

has filed for overtime.

My heart sprints

while I’m standing still.

My hands shake

like I’m holding a verdict.

My body sounds alarms

no one else can hear.

And because you can’t see smoke,

you assume there’s no fire.

They call it “invisible.”

Like that makes it softer.

Like hidden means harmless.

But the human skeleton has 208 bones,

and somehow all of mine

know exactly when the system surges.

Pain doesn’t need spectacle.

It doesn’t need a cast,

a brace,

a wheelchair spotlight.

Sometimes it’s just static.

Constant.

Low-grade.

Draining the battery

before noon.

And here’s the part that feels cruel:

The world is built

for predictable wiring.

For bodies that reboot overnight.

For nerves that don’t misfire

because the air was too loud

or the light was too bright

or the day was simply too much.

People say,

“You look fine.”

Yes.

That’s the problem.

My system fails quietly.

Gracefully.

With good posture.

So I carry a walking stick now—

not because I’ve given up,

but because I’ve adapted.

Because when the internal grid collapses,

I still have to cross the street.

This is what a broken system looks like:

not collapse—

but compensation.

Not drama—

but management.

Not visible ruin—

but constant negotiation

between what I can do

and what it costs.

You want to fix something?

Start with believing

that not all breakdowns

are loud.

Some of us

are buffering

in plain sight.