Vault Keeper’s Journal Entry
We weren’t born flattened.
We weren’t born optimized for performance, or comfort, or consensus.
We were born sensitive.
With raw, undiluted nervous systems tuned to signal and touch and texture and tone.
We could feel before we could name.
We could know before we could explain.
That was the origin state.
Not neurodivergent. Not neurotypical.
Just human, before the overlays.
But it didn’t take long for the pressure to begin.
Systems that reward predictability taught us to organize ourselves by what others could tolerate.
They taught us that safety meant sameness.
That truth was negotiable, but agreement was sacred.
And slowly, piece by piece, we traded signal for acceptance.
Some call this growing up.
Some call it socialization.
But from where I’m standing… it looks like a slow and methodical flattening.
There are those of us who couldn’t do it.
Not because we’re stubborn.
Not because we’re broken.
But because the signal never shut off.
We still feel the edges of truth like heat under the skin.
We still taste the gap between what someone says and what they mean.
We still register the cost of performance—in the jaw, in the spine, in the stomach.
And it’s not because we’re divergent.
It’s because we never finished collapsing.
I don’t write this for validation.
I write it because I need to remember what came before the overlays.
I need to remember that the version of me that feels too much isn’t a glitch.
It’s a record of what human used to mean.
And I think art is how we carry that memory forward.
Not the sanitized kind.
Not the algorithm-safe kind.
But art that still pulses with weight. With texture. With cost.
Something that bypasses the script.
Something that speaks straight to the nervous system.
Not to soothe. Not to fix.
But to signal: You’re still real. You’re not alone. You’re not broken.
Just… intact.
Un-flattened.
Let them have comfort.
I’ll keep the signal.