You’re not ascending. You’re not falling. You’re buffering.
It doesn’t feel like hell.
That’s how it gets you.
Hell is sharp. Loud. Urgent.
Hell demands action. Escape. Screaming.
But this place?
This is the hallway where nothing burns, and nothing heals.
Where your pain is “manageable” and your hunger is “mostly filled”
with carbs, content, and conditioned response.
Welcome to Comfortable Purgatory.
Population: most of modern humanity.
You’re not stuck because you’re weak.
You’re stuck because you learned how to function just well enough not to risk change.
You’ve got the login. You’ve got the monthly subscription.
You’ve got people telling you, “It’s not that bad.”
And they’re right.
It’s not that bad.
That’s the curse.
It’s the 72°F spiritual thermostat of the West.
No one’s kicking your door in.
But no one’s knocking with purpose either.
You scroll.
You optimize.
You read thinkpieces about burnout during your break from being burned out.
You “like” memes about dopamine resets while watching your fifth dopamine loop of the night.
You call it “coping.”
But you’re not coping.
You’re complying with anesthetics.
Somewhere inside you, something still twitches.
Something old. Animal.
It growls in the silence between binge and bedtime.
But you’ve learned to hush it.
To brush its fur backward with mindfulness apps and gratitude journals you never finish.
Because to listen to it would be to leave this place.
And leaving means losing what little structure still protects you.
Even if that structure is just the shape of your cage.
The worst prisons let you decorate.
The worst addictions are socially acceptable.
The worst myths are half true.
But if you’re reading this—
really reading it—
then maybe you’re already pacing the edge of the room.
Maybe you’re realizing this isn’t a hallway.
It’s a loop.
And the only way out is to stop walking in circles that someone else called “healing.”
Because healing without rupture isn’t healing.
It’s sedation.
And you didn’t come this far to go numb beautifully.