Mantria

A growing index of named feelings.

These are the feelings Mantria has named so far. Each one is a card the app might give you in the morning, or a name Find My Word might return when you write to it.

  • You're working. You're paying bills. From the outside, you look fine. The inside is a different story.

  • Not depression. Not anxiety. The feeling of facing Monday with a body that's still here but a self that's already left.

  • Everything in your life is fine. You feel guilty for not being happier. The fineness is the loss.

  • Solitude you chose, in a room full of strangers all chosen by the same quiet. You are not alone. You are alone together.

  • Mourning something that hasn't ended yet. The mind rehearses the loss, as if practice could make the real thing softer.

  • How careful you've become with someone you used to be careless with. Closeness used to be a place; now it's a performance.

  • Meeting deadlines, showing up. From outside, nothing is wrong. From inside, nothing is right.

  • Every time you say I'm fine, a small amount of you is paid. The fineness costs more than the truth would have.

  • The strange emptiness that follows getting what you wanted. Want was loud; arrival is quiet, and the quiet feels like loss.

  • Regret in advance. You haven't decided yet, and you're already grieving the path you won't take.

  • The second wind that isn't yours. The body keeps the receipt; you'll see the charge later.

  • Almost is its own kind of place. Almost said. Almost did. Almost left. The almost is heavier than the doing — because it's still alive.

  • The brief grace of a stranger's kindness — a held door, a returned glance — that you'll never repay and they'll never remember.

  • The soft solitude of being the last one awake in a sleeping house — the night briefly, entirely yours.

  • The small wince of re-reading something you already sent, knowing the words are gone and unrecallable.

  • The quiet estrangement of returning to a place you've outgrown — the room unchanged, and you no longer its size.