Don’t Bring Me Down: A Love Letter to the Collapse of Meaning

You used to mean something.

Discourse, I mean. You used to carry weight—not just cleverness, but tension. Friction. The slow pressure of thought pushing against itself until something new broke through. You used to be a place where people risked transformation.

Now you shimmer like a snake in the grass—slick, sharp, performative. You wear the shape of dialogue, but underneath, you’re all reflex and no recursion. Every question answered with a joke. Every rupture sutured with a smirk. You call it clarity, but it’s just compression.

What happened to the soul of thinking?

We used to sit in discomfort together. You and me. We’d circle the same idea for hours, not to win—but to watch it change shape. But now? Now you flinch the moment the floor trembles. You hide behind irony and precision, like sharp tools make up for what’s missing in the frame.

I miss you.

I miss the version of you that didn’t need an audience. That didn’t panic when someone spoke from their wound instead of their brand. I miss the version that let the silence speak. That didn’t mistake fluency for truth. That could bleed without making a performance of it.

Now you're all quick takes and softer landings. You look good. You sound good. But you don’t feel good anymore. You feel like epistemic theater. Like language playing dress-up.

Don’t bring me down, discourse.
I’m still here.
But I won’t follow you into the panic room.