A Rosebush in the Desert

In my Weekly Whisper, I wrote that this Libra full moon would reveal where we’ve been hiding from our truth. I didn’t expect it to land here.

Something has been shifting quietly. This is the first time I’ve put words to it.

A Rosebush in the Desert

On performance, belonging, and the places we were never meant to grow.

I had a realisation recently.

Not a gentle one. Not the kind that arrives like clarity. The kind that lands like a door slamming somewhere inside your body.

I don’t want to give a fuck anymore.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a watch-me-disappear performance. Just a quiet, exhausted refusal.

I don’t want to push.

That’s the part that surprised me. Because I know how to push. I’ve built entire versions of myself around pushing. Showing up. Refining. Offering. Trying again. Trying better. Trying differently.

But now, when I think about it, my body doesn’t lean forward.

It stops.

I don’t want to hustle. I don’t want to prove anything. I don’t want to convince anyone that I know what I’m talking about.

I lived it.

That’s the part that irritates me most. This strange theatre of having to present yourself as if you’re still becoming, still earning your place, still building credibility from scratch, when internally you feel ancient with it.

I don’t feel like I’m 25. I'm not. 

I feel like I’ve already done several lifetimes of this.

And yet somehow, here I am again. Back at the beginning. Or something that looks exactly like it. Like I landed on the wrong square and slid all the way down.

Snakes and ladders. Except you don’t remember climbing the ladder, only the drop.

And now the expectation is clear. Start again. Rebuild. Reintroduce yourself. Be visible. Be consistent. Be engaging. Be digestible.

I don’t want to.

That’s the truth I keep circling.

I don’t want to beg for clients. I don’t want to coax attention. I don’t want to package my mind into something that can be easily consumed and validated by an algorithm.

I don’t want to wonder if someone thinks I’m credible.

I don’t care if they do.

Or at least, I don’t want to care anymore.

What I actually want is embarrassingly simple.

I want a home that is mine. A rose garden. A vegetable patch that takes up more time than it should. I want to wear overalls and ruin them with paint while I learn something I’m not good at.

I want a horse again.

That part hits deeper than I expected.

I don’t want to perform intelligence. I don’t want to perform depth. I don’t want to perform authenticity for an audience at all. I am it. And I’m done with the measures that were never mine.

I just want to live inside it.

And yet, somehow, everything feels built to pull you back into the performance.

Post. Share. Engage. Offer value. Be generous. Stay open. Give more. Trust that it returns.

I did all of that.

I was generous. I opened. I gave. I softened. I tried to meet people in sincerity, not strategy.

And if I’m honest, it didn’t feel like it came back tenfold.

It felt like it took.

It took energy. It took time. It took something quieter and more difficult to name. A kind of belief, maybe. A sense that there was a rhythm to things. That effort and offering had some kind of correspondence.

I’m not sure I believe that anymore. Or at least not in the way it’s sold.

There’s something particularly hollow about pouring yourself into work you care about and watching it land into silence. Not even rejection. Just absence.

People see it.

You know they do.

And still, nothing.

Not even the smallest gesture that says, "I witnessed you."

It makes you question strange things. Not just your work. Not just your voice. But the entire premise of how connection is meant to function now.

Because it doesn’t feel like connection.

It feels like exposure without reciprocity.

And I’m tired of placing myself inside that.

What unsettles me more is the quiet dishonesty it creates. Because if I’m really honest, I don’t enjoy the platforms I keep trying to succeed on.

I don’t enjoy shaping myself to fit them. I don’t enjoy showing up to them. I don’t enjoy the constant low-level negotiation of how to be seen without losing something of yourself.

So then what am I doing?

Calling it authenticity while forcing myself into environments that feel inherently inauthentic.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from that contradiction.

And underneath all of it, there’s anger.

Not sharp, explosive anger. Something slower. Heavier.

The kind that comes from realising you followed the instructions.

Be open. Be kind. Be giving. Believe. Align. Trust.

And then looking around and thinking: this didn’t lead where I was told it would.

Or maybe it did, just not in any way that resembles reward.

I remember being told once, years ago, that the more I helped people, the more I would be demoted.

I didn’t understand it then.

It sounded cynical. Or cryptic in that way, people say things when they want to sound profound.

Now it doesn’t feel cryptic at all.

It feels descriptive.

And I don’t know what to do with that yet, except this:

I don’t want to keep playing a game I don’t respect.

Even if I haven’t fully figured out what replaces it.

And the part I don’t say out loud is this.

I still show up.

That’s the detail that complicates everything.

Because if I truly didn’t care, if I had actually reached that clean, detached place of indifference, I wouldn’t be here at all. I wouldn’t be writing. I wouldn’t be posting. I wouldn’t be thinking about whether any of it lands.

But I do.

I still open the laptop. I still draft the words. I still press publish with that small, involuntary flicker of hope I pretend I’ve outgrown.

And then I watch it disappear into the same quiet.

Not always. Just enough times that the pattern becomes undeniable.

That’s the part that wears you down. Not failure in any dramatic sense. Just the slow erosion of response. The absence of friction. The feeling that you could vanish mid-sentence and the room would continue exactly as it was.

It starts to feel less like expression and more like broadcasting into a void that doesn’t even echo.

And I’ve tried to reason with it. Tried to tell myself the things you’re meant to say in these moments. That it takes time. That consistency matters. That the right people will find you. That the work compounds in ways you can’t yet see.

I understand all of that.

That’s almost the problem.

I understand the system well enough to see exactly how it functions, and how little of it actually has anything to do with depth, or truth, or lived experience.

It rewards visibility. It rewards repetition. It rewards what can be consumed quickly and is easily agreed upon.

And I don’t move like that.

Or maybe I can, but something in me resists it.

So I sit in this strange contradiction. Knowing how to play the game, but not wanting to. Wanting the outcome, but not the mechanism.

And there’s no clean way to reconcile that.

Because the truth I don’t like admitting is this:

I’m not above it.

If I were, I’d walk away without a second thought.

But I don’t.

I think about how I will support myself. I think about what happens if I stop. I think about the practical reality that refusing to engage doesn’t exempt you from needing to live.

And suddenly I don’t care becomes less of a philosophy and more of a luxury.

So I stay.

Half in, half out.

Present, but unconvinced.

Trying, but already tired of trying.

And underneath that is something more difficult to sit with.

Not self-pity. Not even defeat.

Disappointment.

A kind of quiet heartbreak about people, more than anything else.

Because it’s not just the platforms. It’s what they reveal.

How easy it is for people to consume without acknowledging. To watch without responding. To take something in and offer nothing back, not even a small signal of recognition.

Not because they’re cruel, necessarily.

Just because they don’t feel compelled to.

That’s what unsettles me.

The ordinariness of it.

The way indifference has become ambient. Like a kind of social smog you don’t notice until you realise you’ve been breathing it in for years.

We’ve all become performers inside it.

Curating, presenting, refining. Not always dishonestly, but still with an awareness of being seen. And when everyone is performing, something strange happens.

The audience disappears.

Or maybe it fragments into something less human. Metrics instead of presence. Numbers instead of response. Visibility without relationship.

And I don’t know how to locate myself inside that.

Because I don’t actually want an audience in that sense.

I want resonance.

I want to know that when I speak, it lands somewhere real. Even if it’s small. Even if it’s quiet. Even if it’s only a handful of people who actually meet it.

But instead, there’s this constant ambiguity.

Did it matter?

Did it reach anyone?

Was it worth the energy it took to articulate it?

There’s no clear answer.

So you keep going, but with less certainty each time.

And I think that’s where I am now.

Not collapsed. Not defeated. Just unwilling to pretend I believe in the structure the way I used to.

Still showing up. Still creating. Still trying in ways that don’t even feel like trying anymore.

But without the illusion that effort guarantees anything. Without the belief that giving more will necessarily return more. Without the comfort of thinking there’s a formula I just haven’t cracked yet.

There might not be.

And that’s the part I’m learning to sit with.

Not as a tragedy. Not as a failure.

Just as reality.

Which leaves me here, in something far less tidy than I’d like.

Still wanting the life I described. The garden. The quiet. The horse. The space to exist without constant translation.

Still needing to function inside a world that doesn’t particularly reward that.

Still angry, at times. Still disappointed. Still exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t touch.

And still, despite all of it, not quite willing to disappear.

Which, I suppose, is its own kind of answer.

Even if it’s not a satisfying one.

Because the truth is, I don’t actually want to disappear.

I want relief.

There’s a difference.

Disappearing is a reaction. Relief is something else entirely. Something quieter. Something that doesn’t require me to abandon myself just to escape the noise.

And when I sit with it long enough, past the anger, past the disappointment, past the urge to burn the whole thing down, I can feel it more clearly.

It isn’t that I don’t want to create.

It’s that I don’t want to contort.

I don’t want to keep translating myself into something more palatable, more clickable, more easily received. I don’t want to keep shaving off the edges so that I can fit into systems that were never built to hold me properly in the first place.

That’s where the exhaustion is coming from.

Not the work itself.

The distortion of it.

Because when I imagine the life I actually want, there’s still work inside it. There’s still expression. There’s still output.

It just doesn’t feel like performance.

It feels like living.

And maybe that’s the piece I’ve been missing. Not how to be seen, but where I am willing to stand.

Because I’ve been standing in places that require me to negotiate my own shape just to remain visible.

And I’m tired of negotiating.

So maybe the question isn’t how to keep up.

Maybe it’s what I quietly step out of. What I stop feeding. What I allow to fall away, even if it looks irresponsible from the outside.

Because the fear is real.

How will I support myself?

What happens if nothing replaces it?

What if I step back and nothing comes toward me?

I don’t have clean answers to that.

But I can’t ignore the other reality anymore either.

That continuing exactly like this is its own kind of slow erosion.

And I’ve already felt what that does over time.

So maybe this isn’t about quitting.

Maybe it’s about refusing to keep participating in ways that hollow me out.

Even if I don’t yet know the full alternative. Even if it means things get quieter before they get clearer. Even if it means trusting something far less structured than what I’ve been told to follow.

Because for all the talk of alignment and belief and timelines, none of it ever accounted for this particular moment.

The one where you’ve done everything you were supposed to do, and still find yourself here.

Not broken.

Just unwilling.

And maybe that’s not failure.

Maybe that’s the beginning of something far less performative. Something that doesn’t need to be constantly witnessed to be real. Something that, finally, belongs to me again.

Because the deeper truth is this.

I wanted to believe I was wanted.

Not in some surface way. Not in the shallow metrics of attention or approval. Something more fundamental than that. Something that sits much earlier in the body.

And I think that’s where this actually touches.

Because when I trace it back, far enough, it doesn’t start here.

It starts at the beginning.

With the quiet, unspoken knowing of not being chosen. Not being held in that way. Being overlooked. Set aside. Left to organise myself without the assurance that I mattered in the room.

And it’s strange, the way a life can be built on top of that.

How you can create something that looks full. Capable. Expressive. Even successful in parts. A life that, from the outside, appears like you’ve found your place.

And still carry that earlier imprint underneath it.

So you give.

You share. You create. You offer something real. Something considered. Something that took time, thought, and presence to form.

And somewhere in it, quietly, is the hope that this time it will land differently. That this time it will be met. That this time you won’t feel like you’re speaking into a space that doesn’t return anything recognisable.

And when it doesn’t happen, not once but repeatedly, it does something to you.

Not dramatically.

Just enough to make you stop and look at it differently.

To ask the question you weren’t asking before.

What am I actually doing here?

Because it begins to feel like standing outside a snowglobe, something you can see clearly, pressing your hand against the glass, knowing there’s movement inside, knowing there are people in there, knowing you’re visible to some degree.

And still not being let in.

Not rejected outright.

Just not received.

And that’s a particular kind of disorientation.

Because it doesn’t give you anything to push against.

No clear no. No clear yes.

Just a kind of ongoing absence that slowly rearranges how you understand your place.

And I don’t say this from a place of self-rejection.

That’s the part that complicates it.

I don’t think I’m without value. I can see my mind. I can see my work. I can see what I carry, what I’ve lived, what I’ve built.

I’m not blind to it.

Which makes the disconnect sharper.

Because if I couldn’t see it at all, there would be something simpler to resolve.

But I can.

And still, it doesn’t translate.

So I find myself asking questions I don’t particularly like.

Why do I keep showing up?

Why do I still care?

Why is my instinct still to offer rather than withdraw?

Why does my heart keep moving outward when there’s so little that comes back to meet it?

And beneath that, something even more confronting.

Why can’t I just not care?

Why can’t I be more self-contained? More superficial. More strategic. Less invested in whether something is real or meaningful or actually lands in another person.

Why can’t I just play it the way it's played now?

I don’t have a clean answer to that.

Only the observation that I don’t seem to be built that way.

And I’ve tried, in smaller ways, to adjust. To soften the edges. To make things more accessible. To shape my expression into something that might travel further, land more easily, and be received more readily.

But every time I do, something in me pulls back.

Because I can feel the cost of it.

And I’m no longer willing to pay that particular price just to be let into a room that doesn’t even feel like mine.

So it leaves me here.

Not at the beginning. Not in the middle.

Somewhere else entirely.

A place where I can see clearly what I don’t want to keep doing, without yet having a fully formed structure for what comes next.

And that’s not a comfortable place to stand.

Because the practical questions don’t disappear.

How will I support myself?

What replaces this?

What happens if nothing does?

They remain.

But so does the other truth.

That what I actually want is not complicated.

A home.

A garden that asks for my attention in a different way.

Paint on my hands instead of words shaped for approval.

A horse again.

A life that feels inhabited rather than performed.

Not an audience.

Not validation.

Just a way of living that doesn’t require me to constantly position myself to be seen, to fit, or to perform in ways that were never natural to me.

And maybe the most honest way I can say it is this.

I feel like something that was planted in the wrong place.

Not wrong in itself.

Just misplaced.

A rosebush in a desert, still trying to do what it naturally does, still reaching, still offering something that requires a different environment to actually thrive.

And at some point, the question stops being how to keep blooming here.

And becomes whether I’m willing to acknowledge that this might never be the right soil.

I don’t have the full answer to that yet.

Only the growing certainty that continuing as I have been is no longer something I can pretend makes sense.

And that whatever comes next will have to be built from a different premise entirely.

Not how to be received.

But where I am actually able to live.

Because maybe that’s the part I’ve been resisting.

Not the effort.

The relocation.

The idea that I might not be failing at this.

I might be misplaced within it.

And those are not the same thing.

Because failure suggests I didn’t do enough. Didn’t try hard enough. Didn’t get it right.

But this doesn’t feel like that.

This feels like trying to grow something living in conditions that don’t sustain it.

And then questioning the life inside the thing rather than the environment around it.

There’s a kind of quiet violence in that.

Turning on yourself when the soil was never right.

And I think I’ve done that for long enough.

Measured myself against the response. Against visibility. Against whether I could make something land in a space that was never designed for the way I move, the way I think, the way I express.

And then wondering why it felt like depletion instead of expansion.

So maybe this isn’t the moment where everything comes together.

Maybe this is the moment where I stop trying to make it.

Stop trying to make myself fit.

Stop trying to make the system respond.

Stop trying to make something grow where it keeps asking me to shrink first.

And that doesn’t mean I stop living.

It doesn’t mean I stop creating.

It doesn’t even mean I disappear.

It just means I stop confusing visibility with belonging.

Because they are not the same thing.

And I think I’ve been chasing one while quietly starving for the other.

So if I’m honest, this doesn’t leave me with answers.

It leaves me with a different orientation.

A willingness to step out of places that require me to perform just to exist.

A willingness to risk being unseen in exchange for being intact.

A willingness to build something slower, quieter, less validated, but actually mine.

And maybe that’s what this has been asking of me all along.

Not to be wanted everywhere.

Just to stop placing myself where I’m not.

Thank you for reading 

Delahrose