Marie’s ChatGPT-Assisted Deconstruction Blog
The Shift from External Validation to Internal Trust
I used to feel like every small update in my life needed to be shared, like I needed someone else to feel the emotion for me. But lately, I've been pausing before reaching for my phone, realizing I can hold these moments on my own. It’s a shift—from needing immediate connection to trusting my own experience, and from measuring my worth by productivity to letting myself rest without guilt.
When Creativity Stalls: The Gap Between Inspiration and Action
I keep collecting words that move me, imagining them framed and displayed, yet I never make the art. The impulse to create is there, but something stops me. Is it perfectionism? A fear of not measuring up? Or is the act of imagining enough on its own? This is an exploration of creative inertia and how to gently move through it.
The Commodification of Spirituality: A Critical Look at White Lady Witch and Crystal Culture
Modern witchcraft and crystal culture have become a mainstream aesthetic, blending spirituality with self-help and consumerism. While it offers accessible self-exploration and empowerment, it often prioritizes aesthetics over depth, borrows heavily from marginalized traditions, and turns spiritual practices into trendy commodities. This critique unpacks the movement’s appeal, its flaws, and what it says about American culture today.
Holding My Thoughts Close: When Reflection Feels Too Big to Share
Lately, I’ve been quiet in my relationships—not because I don’t care, but because I don’t know how to explain what’s happening inside me. These dialogues, these realizations, they feel too vast, too deep to translate into casual conversation. So for now, I wait, holding my thoughts close until they form into something I can share.
Metacognition, Lust, and the Hall of Mirrors: When Awareness Feels Like a Trap
I’m afraid to feel again—because as soon as I do, my mind jumps in, analyzing every second of it. It’s like living inside a hall of mirrors, where every thought reflects endlessly back at me. I understand why it happens. I see it. But knowing doesn’t make it stop. So now what?
Love Without the Fairy Dust: A Practical Look at Romance, Attachment, and Attraction
What is love, really? Strip away the poetry, the grand gestures, and the mysticism, and love is still there—connection, attachment, care. Romance is just one way we express it. Attraction is a mix of biology, psychology, and context. None of it is magic, but all of it is deeply human.
The Weight of Awareness: Identity, Judgment, and the Search for Meaning
I keep asking myself if I’m special, if I owe others compassion, if I’ve got it all wrong—again. I feel unprepared for my own reflection, for aging, for what it means to be human. It’s unsettling to realize there was never a manual for this, that I am constantly waking up to truths I didn’t expect. But maybe being lost is just another part of becoming.
Distraction, Derealization, and the Weight of Realization
Lately, I can’t stop distracting myself—reading, eating, watching TV, anything to keep my mind occupied. But I think I know why. I’m living alone for the first time, and there’s nothing left to shield me from my own awareness. It’s all crashing in. The reality of my life—what I survived, what was stolen from me, what I denied—was real. And now, I have no choice but to see it.
Looking Back at Belief: Untangling the Evangelical Lens on Reality
Reading old journal entries where I talked to God, I feel like I was losing my mind. I wasn’t. I was a human, trying to process life—but through an evangelical framework that twisted every thought, every doubt, every fear into something shameful. Now, I’m left wondering: if the reality was the same then as it is now, how did belief change everything?
Tracing the Winding Path: A Reflection on Faith, Loss, and Self-Discovery
For years, I survived by weaving my identity through faith, relationships, and work—each a temporary shelter from the questions I wasn’t ready to face. Now, with all those structures stripped away, I stand at the center of my own awareness, untethered and asking: What happens when there's nothing left to run from?