Elisa Wontorcik
Bio
Artist, writer, and ritual-maker reclaiming voice through chaos and creation. Founder of Embrace the Chaos Creations, I craft prose, collage, and testimony that honor survivors, motherhood, and mythic renewal.
Stories (58)
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Full Descent
Full Descent The descent never feels like falling at first. It feels like slowing. It feels like thickening. It feels like the air turning to syrup around me. After so much altitude, so much brightness, so much velocity, the first downward pull feels almost gentle — a soft tug at the edges of my mind, a heaviness settling into my limbs.
By Elisa Wontorcik21 days ago in Chapters
Beginning of the Fall
Chapter 7: The Beginning of the Fall The higher you go, the harder you fall. The fall never begins with a crash. It begins with a wobble — a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the internal atmosphere. A moment where the altitude that once felt like freedom suddenly feels unstable. The air thins just a little too much. The light sharpens just a little too far. The speed becomes just a little too fast to sustain.
By Elisa Wontorcik21 days ago in Poets
The First Hairline Cracks
The first cracks never look like cracks. They don’t arrive with drama or warning. They don’t announce themselves as danger. They hide inside the very things that feel like power — speed, clarity, momentum, capability. That’s why they’re so easy to miss. That’s why they’re so dangerous.
By Elisa Wontorcik21 days ago in Poets
The Problem with Altitude
The Problem With Altitude Altitude always feels like freedom at first. The higher I rise, the lighter everything becomes — the thoughts, the tasks, the doubts, the weight of my own history. The air thins in a way that feels clean, almost holy. I can see farther. I can think faster. I can move without friction. It feels like transcendence.
By Elisa Wontorcik22 days ago in Chapters
The Body as a Warning
The body always knows before the mind admits it. Long before the thoughts begin to fray, long before the brilliance turns brittle, long before the light fractures into something sharp, my body starts sending signals — quiet, precise, insistent. Not alarms. Not emergencies. Warnings.
By Elisa Wontorcik22 days ago in Chapters
Overexposure
There is a point in the ascent where the brightness stops illuminating and starts burning. It happens gradually, then all at once — the moment when the light that once felt like clarity becomes something harsher, sharper, more invasive. This is the stage of the upward weather I call overexposure.
By Elisa Wontorcik22 days ago in Chapters
The Myth of Brilliance
There is a point in the ascent where the speed stops feeling like speed and starts feeling like genius. It’s the most dangerous part of the upward weather — not because it’s chaotic, but because it feels like truth. The chemistry sharpens everything: thoughts, senses, instincts, confidence. And in that sharpened state, it becomes easy to believe that the brightness is earned.
By Elisa Wontorcik24 days ago in Poets
New Normal
There is always a moment — small, quiet, almost forgettable — when the spark stops being a warning and becomes a state. It never looks like a turning point from the outside. It’s not a dramatic shift. It’s not a cinematic beat. It’s a subtle internal click, a recalibration so slight that only someone who has lived this cycle as many times as I have would recognize it.
By Elisa Wontorcik26 days ago in Poets
The Sky
I always know the beginning of the ascent by the spark behind my eyes. It’s the smallest shift, almost imperceptible to anyone else, but unmistakable to me. A flicker. A sharpening. A quiet ignition in the center of my skull, as if someone has cracked open a window in my mind and let in a gust of bright, electric air.
By Elisa Wontorcik28 days ago in Chapters
The Body Remembers
The body remembers what the mind tries to outrun. It remembers every storm, every rupture, every season of survival you forced yourself through. It remembers the nights you held yourself together with nothing but breath and grit. It remembers the mornings you rose anyway, even when rising felt like lifting a collapsed building off your own chest. The body keeps its own archive, written in muscle, breath, pulse, and instinct. Long after the mind rewrites the story, the body still carries the original draft.
By Elisa Wontorcikabout a month ago in Poets
You do it because you have to
There comes a point in every ascent when you realize not everyone is meant to rise with you. It is not cruelty. It is not abandonment. It is simply the truth of altitude: some people cannot breathe where you are going. Some people cannot tolerate the clarity you’ve earned. Some people cannot follow you into a life that no longer requires your disappearance.
By Elisa Wontorcikabout a month ago in Poets
