The Madwoman

Something is missing.

I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.

It’s not outside of me. I don’t even think it’s something I lost.

It’s like I’m being haunted by the absence of something I never had to begin with.

There’s something in him that doesn’t line up. I can feel that too. I want to help him find it. Like if I can just see it clearly enough, I can fix whatever it is that makes him feel so incomplete.

He says he wants to drink in my… indifference?

I lost that a long time ago. There’s nothing left of it to give him.

All that’s left is pressure. Like a blanket of heavy static being lowered over everything as we descend.

He promised me everything. But I gave myself to him anyway— to make up for the secrets that were never mine to tell.

And somehow—

I’m the one left longing for the return of the missing pieces of something I never had to begin with.

The Scholar

Missing Limbs operates under the assumption of absence.

Not loss in the traditional sense—nothing has been clearly removed, and no identifiable object is missing. Instead, the subject experiences a persistent sense of incompleteness without a defined origin.

This distinction is critical.

The absence is not confirmed. It is felt.

Because the absence cannot be located, the subject redirects focus outward. The perceived fragmentation in the self is projected onto the other, creating the belief that resolution can be achieved through understanding, repairing, or completing them.

This produces a false objective:

If the other can be made whole, the self will follow.

This is not a solution. It is a loop-sustaining mechanism.

The system requires the perception of incompleteness to initiate movement. Without it, there is no reason to engage, no reason to pursue, and no reason to remain.

In this state, identity becomes organized around a deficit that cannot be resolved, because it was never concretely present.

The subject is not responding to a missing component.

The subject is responding to the feeling that something should be there.

The Witness

This is the part where you think you know what you’re looking for.

You don’t.

You just know something feels off.

Not broken, exactly. Not gone. Just… not right in a way you can’t explain.

So you start looking for it. And because you can’t find it in yourself, you start looking at someone else. You notice the gaps in them. The things that don’t line up. The parts that feel unfinished. And it starts to feel like if you can just understand those pieces—fix them, even—something in you will settle.

Like it will finally make sense.

It won’t.

But at this point, you don’t know that yet.

All you know is that something feels missing.

And for now, that’s enough to keep you moving.