The Hollow Echo

The Hollow Echo

Words fall from my mouth
like stones into an endless well.
I hear them hit the bottom,
a hollow echo returning
to remind me
that they were never mine
to begin with.

They feel foreign on my tongue,
alien syllables
I barely recognize,
as if I’ve borrowed them
from a language
I don’t understand.
I speak,
but the meaning dissolves
before it reaches the air.

The world around me shifts,
its edges too sharp,
its colors too vivid,
as if someone turned up the brightness
on a screen I can’t look away from.
Everything feels two-dimensional,
a paper-thin reality
where I can see the seams.

When I touch something solid,
it recoils—
or maybe I do.
Even my hands don’t feel like mine,
their movements deliberate,
awkward,
as if they’re being controlled
by someone else.

I try to ground myself,
to hold onto the moment,
but the moment won’t hold me.
Time bends and stretches,
its rhythm disjointed,
its presence an illusion
I can’t trust.

Voices blur together,
fading into static.
Even my own thoughts
lose their anchor,
floating away
like leaves on a restless wind.

I want to scream,
but the sound would only echo,
a hollow reminder
of my disconnection.
I am here,
but I am not.

The world moves on
as if it doesn’t notice
my absence.
And I watch it,
detached,
a spectator in a life
that feels borrowed,
a dream I can’t wake from.

This is the hollow echo—
not silence,
but the sound of distance
wrapped in the illusion of closeness,
a reminder that everything,
even my own voice,
feels far away.

Buy Me A Coffee

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There are days when I open my mouth and don’t recognize what comes out.

The words feel like they belong to someone else—like I’ve borrowed a voice just to get through the day. I hear myself speaking, answering questions, moving through conversations, but underneath it all there’s this strange, hollow distance. As if I’m echoing instead of living. As if something essential has stepped back and left only the outline behind.

I’ve been calling it a kind of darkness, but not the loud kind. Not despair that announces itself. This is quieter. More disorienting. The kind that makes everything look too clear and yet somehow unreal at the same time. Like the world has been sharpened into something I can’t quite touch.

I think of Psalms—“Why are you cast down, O my soul?”—and I feel less alone in it. There’s something almost relieving about knowing this kind of inner unraveling isn’t new. That someone else sat in it long enough to write it down. That even faith has seasons where it feels like it’s speaking into an empty well, waiting for something—anything—to answer back.

There are moments I try to ground myself. I press my hands into something solid, steady my breathing, remind myself of what is true. But even truth feels slippery in these hours. Time stretches in odd ways. Thoughts drift before I can hold them. I feel present and absent all at once—like I’m watching my life from a slight distance, unable to fully step back into it.

And yet… there’s still something underneath all of it.

A thread I can’t quite lose.

I think of 2 Corinthians—“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed… perplexed, but not in despair.” That word perplexed feels right. Not broken beyond repair. Not abandoned. Just… lost in the fog of it. Still standing, even if I don’t understand how.

This feels like what people mean when they talk about a dark night of the soul—not the absence of God, but the absence of feeling Him. The quiet stripping away of certainty, of sensation, of anything that feels like solid ground. It’s unsettling, because I can’t rely on what I feel to tell me what’s real.

So I have to choose something deeper.

Not emotion. Not clarity. Just a kind of stubborn trust.

I think of Isaiah—“When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned.” Not if. When. As if this passage through disconnection, through confusion, through that hollow echo… is part of the walk itself. Not a detour. Not a failure.

Just a place I have to move through.

There is something humbling in that.

I don’t have to fix it tonight. I don’t have to force myself back into feeling whole or present or certain. Maybe surviving it is enough. Maybe staying—breathing, speaking even when the words feel foreign—is its own quiet kind of faith.

Because even now, even here, I am still reaching.

And I think that matters more than I can see.

Maybe this echo isn’t proof that I’m gone.

Maybe it’s proof that I’m still here—

listening,

waiting,

learning how to trust a voice

I cannot yet fully hear

but refuse to believe

has left me.