valen arcelo

Author's note:
In "Pupa," the three words that I included were: body, soul, and rigor samsa. I was inspired to use the latter word "rigor samsa" after reading a definition of it from John Koenig in his collection "Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows." It was honestly a perfect word that encapsulated my own experiences in dealing with social anxiety. For reference, I added Koenig's definition below:

rigor samsa

n. a kind of psychological exoskeleton that can protect you from pain and contain your anxieties, but always ends up cracking under pressure or hollowed out by time—and will keep growing back again and again, until you develop a more sophisticated emotional structure, held up by a strong and flexible spine, built less like a fortress than a cluster of treehouses.

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