Still Here: Art Outside the Blast Radius

✶ Note to Readers: This piece contains themes of PTSD, burnout, self-harm ideation, and military trauma ✶

You’re a parent.
You work over 40 hours a week.
Volunteer another 15.
Spend 10+ hours driving.
Say yes to “just” one more thing.
And yet? It’s not enough. It’s never enough.

You make art. But it doesn’t matter. Not to the right people. Not in the right rooms. You lie in bed, replaying all the things you didn’t get done today. That voice? It never stops. You could’ve done more. Stop being weak. Stop being lazy.

You take your migraine pills. Force yourself through the dishes. Try to rehab the body you’ve already written off. Mow the lawn. Answer emails you don’t care about. Make lists you won’t finish. And prep for a tomorrow you already dread.

None of it matters. Not really.

Because the voice doesn’t care what you did. Only what you didn’t.
And if you were better—more efficient, more focused, more disciplined—you’d have handled it all.
You'd be more successful, more productive, more... useful. 

But you’re not.

So you lie there, eyes open, counting failures like sheep.
And you hate yourself for it.
Again.

In the military, “not enough” wasn’t a judgment. It was a survival tactic. You push through. You override limits. You don’t say no; you follow orders. You keep moving… because failures are paid for in blood.

There’s always more you can do.
Perfect PT score? Get better.
Expert Marksman? Still not enough.
Keep cleaning your weapon… even if it was spotless an hour ago. 

It’s not neurosis. It’s discipline.
And it’s beaten into you.

You learn to preempt failure, punish hesitation, and treat exhaustion as weakness. Eventually, you stop asking how much is enough. The answer’s already clear: there is no enough.

You get out.
You come home.
You transition.
You try.

Now you have a job. You show up. You deliver. But you’re still wired for overdrive. So you fill every gap with more. More commitments, more responsibilities, more proving. 

And people ask:
“Why haven’t you gotten this project done yet?”
Or: “Why can’t you stop what you’re doing and help over here?”
Or worse: “Why did you help over there, when you were supposed to be focused here?”

There’s no right answer. No way out.

If you say no, you’re selfish. If you say yes, it’s never seen as generosity; it’s seen as your new baseline. Just more proof that you can handle it, so now you should. No one recalibrates their expectations when you’re burning out. They just raise the bar.

And if you drop a ball?

They don’t ask what else you’re carrying. They assume you weren’t trying hard enough. That you’re disorganized. That you don’t care. They don’t see that you’re juggling a hundred spinning blades. That you haven’t taken a real breath in weeks. That your sleep is broken. Your joints are aching. Your brain feels like a cracked windshield.

But you keep showing up. You keep saying yes. Because the fear of being seen as unreliable is worse than the reality of being broken. You’re running because if you stop—if you really let go—you don’t know what will happen.

And part of you already knows: it won’t end well.

You’re not driven by ego. You’re driven by panic.

Afraid of stopping.
Afraid of being forgotten.

Afraid that if people really knew how much effort it takes just to look “functional,” they’d walk away. That if you stopped, the whole fragile structure you’ve built would collapse. That you would collapse. And the truth is that sometimes, you already are. Just very, very quietly.

And it snowballs. You begin failing because you’re doing too much. And the result? You take on even more to make up for it. Because stopping feels like quitting. And quitting feels like dying.

Art was supposed to be different.

I make art because I have to. It’s a compulsion. I don’t get a choice. Not making feels like wasting my time. And if I’m wasting time, I’m failing. And it’s not just art for me. It’s everything. But the voice in my head doesn’t care. It says: You didn’t show it in the right gallery. You didn’t frame it the right way. You didn’t say the right words. It wasn’t good enough.

Do you even deserve to be here? 

Because the voice is never just about the work. It’s about you. And it’s relentless. Your friends who died would’ve done more. They would’ve made better use of the time. You’re squandering it.

There’s a ghost-hand on your shoulder, telling you every wasted second is an insult to those who didn’t get any more. You feel like a thief. A fraud. Like you’re misusing every breath you’ve been allowed to keep.

People don’t see what it feels like to complete something and still feel worthless. To meet your deadlines and still feel like you want to die. PTSD isn’t just flashbacks.

It’s the constant misfiring of threat detection.
It’s scanning a room like you’re under attack.
It’s critiquing your own work like it’s a tactical liability.
It’s never trusting yourself. The what if’s always cling to you.

It’s like being two people at once, even when you know you’re not.
The trauma bleeds into your posture, your hands, your tongue.
The voice becomes indistinguishable from your own.

And it doesn’t just criticize your work; it poisons the whole process.
Every brushstroke, every weld, every choice you make becomes a test that you’re failing in real time.

The outside world? They see your work and say, “It took you 50 hours to do that? I could’ve done it in five.”

They don’t see what’s behind your eyes.
The excruciating mental calculations.
The obsessive second-guessing.
The fact that it took you 49 of those hours just to start.

So what does it mean to disobey the voice?

What does it mean to stop, not because you’re finished, but because you’re done for today?

What if you never earn the rest? What if you just take it? What if the most radical thing you can do isn’t pushing through, but stopping?

Maybe making is enough.
Maybe being is enough.
Maybe surviving is the work.

Or maybe it isn’t.
Maybe “enough” is just the smallest dose of motion required to keep you from spiraling. Just enough to keep you among the living. And for now, that has to be okay.

Just okay.

I didn’t do it all today. I probably won’t tomorrow.
But I’m still here.
That has to count for something.
Even if I’m not sure I believe it.