The Bubble I Built

…and what it means to let it soften

For a long time now, I’ve lived inside a bubble.

Not a bubble of ignorance, exactly.

Not apathy. Not denial.

A bubble I built.

Consciously. Carefully. Tenderly.

A bubble I thought would let me live with the world — not apart from it, but not at the mercy of it either.

Because there is so much to feel.

So much that doesn’t work.

The violence we do to one another.

The cruelty baked into systems.

The way we treat the Earth like a thing to own instead of a being to honour.

And I wanted to do something about all of that. I still do.

But I believed if I let it all in, raw and unchecked, it would drown me.

So I created boundaries. Intentional ones.

I became responsible for my mindset. My internal world.

I stopped watching the news.

I stopped following threads of outrage online.

I stopped entertaining conversations rooted only in complaint or despair.

I told myself: You can’t pour from an empty cup.

You’re doing this to stay resourced enough to make a difference.

And it was true.

But it wasn’t the whole truth.

Because bubbles are made of something.

And mine was made of privilege.

Not the flashy kind — not yachts and private jets —

but the quieter, more dangerous kind:

the privilege to not look.

To choose when and how suffering enters my awareness.

To turn off the world when it gets too loud.

But not everyone has that choice.

Some people live inside the fire.

There is no “off.”

No weekend away from injustice.

No curated feed that filters out what’s too much to bear.

And here’s what hit me hardest:

Those of us who can look away

are usually the ones with the wealth, access, voice, and power

to change the very things we’re turning from.

That’s a sobering mirror.

And it cracked something in me.

This is not a confession to self-flagellate.

This isn’t about guilt.

Guilt is still about me.

This is about remembering.

Remembering that I am not separate.

That my safety was never meant to be mine alone.

That my healing is bound up with yours.

That the bubble was not wrong — it was a teacher.

But now the lesson has shifted.

Now I am being called to soften the edges.

To let more in.

To trust that I am strong enough now

not to be consumed by the pain of the world

but to be moved by it.

Moved to speak, act, give, change, create, dismantle, repair.

The paradox is this:

I built the bubble to survive.

But I may have to let it go to truly live.

So here I am.

Not bubble-less.

But breaking it open, breath by breath.

Because I want a life

that doesn’t just make sense

but makes impact.

One where I stay awake — not in panic, but in presence.

Where I can hold the world’s heartbreak in one hand,

and my sacred joy in the other.

And never forget they belong to the same whole.