Personal Essay — Completed December 2025

Currently under simultaneous submission

Short Description:

This essay recounts the collapse of my café and the collapse happening inside me. It explores how the constant sensory demands, unpredictability, and social exposure of running a café pressed against limits I never understood. As I navigated city construction outside the door, dwindling finances, and the pressure to stay functional, something deeper was giving way in ways I could not name at the time.

The piece reflects on how the body reaches its threshold long before the mind can recognize it. It traces the burnout I kept pushing through, the small steadiness offered by my regulars, and the grief of losing a structure that once gave my days rhythm. Only later, with an autism and ADHD diagnosis, did everything begin to make sense, revealing signals I had been taught to misread for decades.

(A publication link will be added once the piece is placed.)

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