THE COURT THAT DOESN’T EXIST

On the freedom to stop judging yourself through the gaze you invented By Marcello de Souza
It’s 3:14 in the morning and Ariele — not her real name, but true enough — is staring at a spreadsheet. She isn’t working — she no longer knows if she works or if she merely occupies the space between one insomnia and another with something that looks productive. The cursor blinks. The coffee went cold two hours ago and she didn’t notice. The house is in absolute silence, the kind of silence that amplifies everything that lives inside — and inside, right now, lives a noise she doesn’t know how to describe.
It isn’t anguish, exactly. It’s more like a hum. A deep, continuous rumble that vibrates behind the sternum and says, without words, that something is very wrong. But if someone asked what, she wouldn’t know how to answer. She’d say “I’m tired.” She’d smile. She’d change the subject.
Her phone lights up. A notification from her corporate email. It’s 3:14 on a Wednesday morning and there’s an email from her manager. Sent at 11:47 PM — he doesn’t sleep either, or perhaps he scheduled it to seem like he doesn’t sleep, which is a particular kind of violence disguised as dedication. The subject line reads: “Urgent alignment — Southern region.” The body has three paragraphs. The first is a demand. The second is another demand. The third ends with “we need to talk about this tomorrow, first thing.”
No recognition for yesterday’s work. No mention of the fact that she manages the most complex plant with the greatest responsibility, while a colleague administers a smaller unit whose highlight comes from the strategic product — not from the complexity or responsibility of the role. No acknowledgment of the continuous effort: she hasn’t taken vacation in eleven months. No question about how she’s handling the pressure. This absence of recognition exposes a leadership failure and a culture that values strategic product above real management and assumed responsibility.
She reads the email twice. The first time, she feels her stomach clench like a fist. The second time, her eyes burn, but she doesn’t cry. Crying would be admitting it hurts. And if it hurts, someone might notice. And if someone notices…
She closes the email. Returns to the spreadsheet. The cursor keeps blinking. And the hum behind her sternum rises a tone.
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Here I want to make a brief reflection — and I need to be honest before continuing. This reminds me of years ago, when I wrote any text: a part of me was always choosing words. Assembling images. Calculating the impact of each sentence. There’s a poisonous irony in writing about the court of others’ gaze while a voice inside me whispers: is this good enough? Will the reader be impressed? Will they think I write well?
See? The court operates in all of us. Including in those who write about it. And perhaps the only difference between those who suffer in silence and those who try to put suffering into words is that the latter learned to catch the judge in the act — not to silence him. He remains there. I remain here. And writing happens in this strange space between honesty and performance.
I say this because it would be easy — and dishonest — to speak of freedom from a place of overcoming. That place doesn’t exist. What exists is a daily, imperfect attempt to not blindly obey the voice that measures everything.
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Back to Ariele. She once had a name for this. Not for the suffering — for what came before it. For what now seems to belong to another life.
There was a time when she loved organizing. It sounds ridiculous said like that, but it was true. There was an almost sensory pleasure in taking chaos and transforming it into structure. Opening a blank screen and drawing a plan. Distributing tasks like composing a score — each instrument in its time, each entrance in its moment. Watching the pieces fit together. Feeling, in her chest, that specific warmth that only appears when something we made works.
Leading was an extension of this. Not power — power never interested her. What interested her was the orchestra. Being among people who trusted her. Knowing she could hold the line when everything shook. Offering safety not as discourse, but as presence: I’m here, it will work out, I have a plan. And most of the time, she did.
Analyzing was another form of love. Diving into data like diving into a cold lake — the initial shock and then absolute clarity. Finding the error hidden in the third decimal place. Following a logical thread to the root. Feeling the satisfaction of truly understanding how things worked. Not for intellectual vanity, but because understanding was her way of caring. If I understand, I protect. If I foresee, I prevent disaster. If I plan, no one gets hurt.
She loved all of this.
And what hurts most — more than exhaustion, more than demands, more than the 11:47 PM email — is that she lost access to this love. What was once pleasure became obligation. What was once vocation became trap. Organizing, which was her dance, became forced march. Leading, which was her way of existing in the world, became weight. Analyzing, which was diving, became drowning.
This is what no one tells you about professional exhaustion: it doesn’t just steal energy. It steals meaning. Transforms what a person loves most doing into the thing that destroys them most. And the person remains trapped between vocation and pain, unable to let go of either — because letting go of vocation would be losing oneself, and continuing in pain is losing oneself just the same.
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Thursday, 2:30 PM. Results meeting.
She presents the numbers for all the products she manages. They’re good. Not spectacular — because spectacular is what happens when you manage what brings the highest revenue, not when you manage activities with lean teams and tight budgets. But they’re good. Solid. Consistent. Fruit of ant work that no one sees because no one looks.
The manager listens in silence. On the next slide, he asks about a three percent drop in sales. She explains. It’s seasonal. Happens every year. She has comparative data. Shows it. He nods, but his expression doesn’t change. She knows this expression. It’s the expression of someone who has already decided the answer isn’t enough before even hearing it.
Then the colleague presents. His products are the top sellers. Fifty percent of revenue. The slides have ascending graphs. The manager smiles. Makes positive comments. Uses the word “excellent.” The colleague thanks him with rehearsed modesty.
She observes. Says nothing. On the outside, she’s calm. Taking notes. Professional. Inside, a slow-motion earthquake happens. It’s not envy of the colleague — she knows the comparison is unfair. It’s something worse than envy: it’s confirmation, once again, that the system doesn’t measure what she gives. It measures what the product gives. And her products, no matter how hard she kills herself, won’t compete in raw numbers with the company pop star. Never. The math doesn’t allow it.
She knows this. Intellectually, she knows. But the stomach doesn’t listen to intellect. The stomach heard “excellent” for the other and silence for her, and translated: you are not enough.
After the meeting, she goes to the bathroom. Locks the door. Presses her forehead against the cold wall. Breathes. Once. Twice. On the third breath, her eyes fill. She doesn’t cry — she never cries, crying is losing control and losing control is being seen and being seen is — she holds it. Clenches her jaw. Swallows. Washes her face. Looks in the mirror. The woman looking back has red eyes and a neutral expression. She knows this woman. It’s the version that survives. Not the version that lives.
Returns to her desk. Opens email. Responds to three messages. No one notices anything.
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There’s something I’d like to say and I don’t know if I can say it well, because it resists words. It’s about color.
When someone lives like this — under constant internal surveillance, with the body in permanent alert state, measuring each gesture by the imaginary ruler of the other — the world loses color. Literally. Not as elegant metaphor, but as lived experience. Things turn gray. Lunch has no taste. Sunday has no shape. The music in the car doesn’t reach. It’s as if there’s a film between the person and life, thin enough to seem transparent, thick enough to filter everything vibrant.
She remembers red. The red of anger that, when she was younger, she let out — a heated argument, an “I disagree” said with her whole body, a door slammed harder than necessary. This red now lives locked up. Was domesticated. Became “professionalism.” Became composure. Became that serene smile she uses as shield and that, with time, stuck to her face in a way she no longer knows if it’s mask or skin.
She remembers yellow. The ridiculous yellow of an afternoon when, years ago, a plan she made worked so perfectly that the whole team laughed with relief and surprise. Someone brought cake. She ate two slices. Didn’t think about calories, or impressing anyone, or whether the cake was appropriate for the professional context. Just ate, and laughed, and felt in her chest something she would now call, with astonishment, uncomplicated happiness.
She remembers blue. The blue of an old, honest sadness that appeared when things didn’t work out and that, back then, she allowed. She’d sit, be sad, sometimes call someone and say “today was hard” without shame. The sadness passed. Not because it was faced or resolved, but because it was welcomed. Had space. Breathed and left.
Now it doesn’t leave. Because there’s no space. Because the court doesn’t allow sadness — sadness is weakness, weakness is failure, failure is exposure. So sadness remains trapped, compressed, and transforms into that hum behind the sternum that isn’t anguish exactly, isn’t pain exactly, is a gray that occupies everything.
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Where does this come from? It’s the question everyone asks and that almost everyone answers too quickly.
I won’t answer quickly. I’ll say what I suspect, with all the hesitation the subject deserves — not as truth, but as thread that might help understand the larger design.
When I began the process with Ariele, some insights led me to follow a line of investigation. What I found comes from a house where love existed — genuine, real, present — but where love had conditions. Not explicit conditions, not written contracts. Atmospheric conditions. Conditions of air. The temperature rose when she got it right. Fell when she got it wrong. No one said “I only love you if you’re perfect.” But the child’s body understood the message without needing words: when I get it right, I’m safe. When I get it wrong, the ground moves.
And the child, who has no way to question the rules of the only world she knows, does the only thing she can do: learns not to make mistakes. Or, when that’s impossible, learns to hide the mistake. Or, when that’s also impossible, learns to compensate for the mistake so quickly that no one notices. And calls this discipline. Responsibility. Excellence.
Decades later, the adult woman sits before a spreadsheet at 3 in the morning, obeying an instruction she received at six years old.
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And now comes the part where I should offer a way out. A key. A path. A “do this and that and the court dissolves.”
I won’t.
I won’t because it would be dishonest. Because for some people, at some moments, there is no immediate exit. The court doesn’t close with a pretty phrase. Exhaustion doesn’t pass with an insight. The body that learned to contract doesn’t learn to release in an afternoon. The belief that worth depends on others’ gaze, cultivated over an entire lifetime, doesn’t undo itself with a hopeful final paragraph.
What I can say — and it’s little, and I know it’s little — is that there’s a difference between being broken and being broken. Being is condition. Being is identity. And the confusion between the two is one of the subtlest violences the court imposes: convincing the person that the moment she finds herself in is the definitive truth about who she is.
It isn’t.
She remains the woman who loved organizing, even when organizing became pain. Remains the leader who held the orchestra, even when the orchestra went out of tune and no one helped. Remains the analyst who dove into data with pleasure, even when the pleasure dried up. These versions didn’t die. They’re buried under layers of exhaustion, demands, and fear — but they’re there. Intact. Waiting not for a solution, but for a pause. A moment when surveillance rests enough for life to leak through the cracks.
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Perhaps the only thing that makes sense to say now — the only one that doesn’t sound like advice, formula, or attempt to solve what isn’t solved with words — is this:
You don’t need to close the court to start living. It can remain there, with its sessions and its verdicts and its noise. You can hear it and, even so, choose not to obey. Not as heroic act. Not as epiphany. As small, human, sometimes trembling gesture. As getting up from the chair at 3 in the morning, closing the spreadsheet, and going to sleep without solving anything — knowing that tomorrow the email will still be there and the manager will still be demanding and the numbers will still be unfair. And going to sleep anyway. Because the body asked. And because, for the first time in a long time, you chose to listen to the body instead of the court.
This isn’t overcoming. It isn’t a turning point. It’s survival with dignity.
And sometimes — in some specific moments, for some specific people, in the middle of an exhaustion that sleep doesn’t resolve — survival with dignity is all one can offer oneself. And it’s enough. It’s more than enough. Because it carries within it a truth the court will never admit: that to exist, imperfect, tired, without answers, with jaw clenched and eyes red and spreadsheet open — to exist like this, exactly like this — is already an act of courage that most people don’t perceive.
I perceive.
And if, at some point, between one insomnia and another, the question appears — not as intellectual exercise, but as visceral need: if no one were watching, absolutely no one, how would I know I did good work? — don’t try to answer immediately. Just hold the question. Let it exist without answer. Because the question, alone, is already the beginning of something. I don’t know of what. But of something.
Freedom isn’t something that simply happens. But today — now — perhaps what matters isn’t freedom. Perhaps what matters is something prior and more urgent: the permission to be exactly where one is, without that being yet another failure to be corrected.
You are here. Whole. Even when it doesn’t seem like it.
This is enough. For now, this is enough.
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