I built this because I was drowning and no one was coming to save me.

I know what it is to function on fumes. To spend every working day running on whatever reserve is left after the weekend's recovery, which wasn't really recovery at all, it was just stillness because movement cost too much.

I called it tired. For years I called it tired because I didn't have language for what was actually happening inside me. I was drowning in feelings I couldn't name, couldn't express, couldn't explain to anyone who asked if I was okay.

And I had made a kind of peace with that. I could keep going like this. I was managing.

Then I had Logan.

And something shifted, because drowning alone was one thing. But I couldn't drown with my child needing me to stay afloat. That wasn't okay. That would never be okay.

So I stopped waiting for someone to throw me a rope and started building my own. Piece by piece. Tool by tool. Small interruptions in the spiral. Tiny permissions to exist differently than the world expected me to.

Greg the Geode isn't a character I invented. Greg is what I became when I finally decided to save myself.

If you're the person who holds it together at work and falls apart at home. Who rests all weekend not because you want to but because you have to. Who says "I'm tired" when what you actually mean is "I am running out of ways to keep going."

I made everything here for you. Because I was you. Because in some ways I still am. And because nothing like this existed when I needed it most, so I built it myself.

You're not broken, Miranda. You're overloaded. And those are very different things.

Welcome home. The Department of Nervous System Stability has been expecting you.