why can’t i stop?
"why can’t i stop?"; there’s an ultimatum found in this single question that begs me to break the pattern.
“the endless pontification of another option without the proof it exists”
truthfully, i don’t want to start this post off with my usual greeting, because things have not been so “usual,” per se. i feel that in order to remain true to the promises i made to my audience at the inception of this blog, i must convey the whole truth of my current despair.
so no hello, no welcome, no greetings. just me in my raw, raging, confusing existentialism.
i’m sitting here, writing my fingers away, because it seemed the proper progression after hours of doom scrolling on an app that may cease to exist in a few days. honestly, i would be relieved if tiktok were banned by the unruly forces of a wooden gavel in congress, because maybe then i’d have no choice but to look away. no choice but to stop the endless loop of swiping—thumb a steady metronome of distraction, mind an exhausted runner on a treadmill going nowhere.
but even as i say this, i know the truth: it's not the app, the screen, or the gavel. it’s me. it’s the restless pull inside me that aches for noise, even when i long for silence. it’s the void i’m afraid to sit with, the quiet i fear will swallow me whole.
why can’t i stop?
perhaps because stopping feels like surrender, and surrender is an alien language to my being. to stop is to let go, and letting go is a leap into the unknown. and oh, how the unknown terrifies me. my mind is a forest tangled with "what ifs"—what if i’m nothing without the noise? what if the quiet reveals a truth i’m not ready to see? what if the me i meet in stillness is someone i can’t love?
and here’s the thing: i know i’m not alone in this. i know millions of us are caught in the same relentless current, clutching our phones like lifeboats in a sea of existential dread. and i can’t help but wonder, what does it say about the world we’ve built that we’d rather scroll through strangers’ lives than sit still in our own?
it’s not just tiktok. it’s everything—the constant churn, the culture of consumption, the politics of attention. the lawmakers wielding gavels in wood-paneled rooms might debate bans and regulations, but they’ll never debate the systems that profit from keeping us hooked. they won’t ask who benefits from this endless hunger, or why we’re all starving for connection in the first place.
and so, even as i feel anger at the thought of being policed, part of me wonders if i secretly want to be saved from myself. maybe that’s why the scrolling continues: because stopping would mean confronting what the noise keeps at bay.
but stopping, i think, is also about resistance. it’s about pulling the plug on the fluorescent lights of a 24-hour convenience store where nothing good is ever bought after midnight. it’s closing the doors, stepping into the dark, and trusting that there’s rest to be found in the quiet.
the metaphor that lingers in my mind isn’t an ocean but a marketplace. a bazaar of bright stalls, endless options, hawkers calling out for my attention. it’s overwhelming, chaotic, and addictive. and the longer i stay, the more i spend—not just money, but energy, focus, pieces of myself.
to leave the marketplace is terrifying. the noise fades. the lights dim. but then, suddenly, there’s the sky—open, infinite, mine.
stopping, i realize, isn’t about giving up. it’s about choosing to walk away from the chaos, trusting that what waits beyond the marketplace is not emptiness, but clarity. not loss, but a return.
why can’t i stop?
because stopping means letting go of the marketplace and walking into the unknown. but maybe, just maybe, that’s the only way forward.
and maybe this is how change begins. not with a gavel, not with legislation, but with the quiet courage to leave the noise behind and reclaim what was never theirs to take.
so, i stop. not because i’m forced to, but because i choose to. because in a world that demands my attention, stopping is the loudest protest i have.
and in the stillness, i begin again.
