He had spent years searching for the path to an abandoned well. The story of a child once thrown into its darkness would not leave him. The well seemed to hide itself, as if waiting for the moment he would finally be ready to descend.

When the path downward finally opened, everything shifted. The descent felt less like movement through earth and more like passing through inner layers of his own cosmos. Images of Dante appeared—not as a text, but as an inner guide who knew the way through dark territories.

The air thickened. His steps echoed inside his chest.
And in the deepest part of that space, he saw the boy.
A small figure with a sharp, transparent gaze—the gaze of someone who had once been left alone too early. The child’s anger was not a threat; it was the only shield that had ever kept him alive. Now it stood between them like a thin ring of fire.

He did not speak, afraid to break the fragile contact. The boy did not step forward, but he did not disappear either—already a form of movement.

Silence.
Not empty—alive.
The kind that opens space for the next step.
Moving into another world—the one he called the World of Solar Dust—brought old layers of his psyche to the surface. He had hoped that a new space would ease the weight inside him, but the opposite happened. Everything old rose quickly and precisely.

The World of Muted Constellations remained inside him as a dense internal territory—one of memory, echo, and early traces.
The World of Solar Dust was different: fluid, bright, new, not yet fully inhabited. These two inner worlds did not merge. Their rhythms felt too different to sound together.

For a long time, he thought he had to choose one.
Gradually it became clear: both worlds were his own.
The split between them was an old defense. Integration did not require choosing—it required the capacity to stay.
And in the deepest part of that space, he saw the boy.
A small figure with a sharp, transparent gaze—the gaze of someone who had once been left alone too early.
Sometimes waves of panic rose. He felt the world blur around him and his body lose its footing. These states arrived sharply, especially among people. He understood the mechanics, saw the process, but understanding did not stop the wave. After it passed came a rare, almost transparent stillness—a moment revealing that the experience lived in the body as much as in memory.

He stopped blaming himself for the return of these reactions.
He began to sense they were not weakness, but layers still waiting for transformation.

⸻

The loss of someone close broke his inner cosmos apart. His mind knew that death was inevitable. His feelings refused. The grief remained dense, resistant to words.

He left because he could not stay. One part of him understood the necessity of that choice; another remained fixed in pain.

Silence again.
The kind that follows large losses
and teaches the psyche to breathe differently.

⸻
One night he dreamed.
He was descending behind a small hunched old woman down an endless staircase. Light thinned. At some point she vanished, and he called out to her. A voice answered from below: “I’m here. One step left.”

He stepped—and felt soft, damp soil under his feet.

A warm, yellow-lit space opened before him. A long table. People. Children. A woman inviting him to sit. Simple food, a steady gesture, an unmistakable sense of reality.

He told her he loved his other world—difficult, but full of light.
She smiled as if she knew that he needed both worlds equally.

He understood.
From here, one could go in both directions.
What mattered was not avoiding movement.

⸻

He lived between the World of Muted Constellations and the World of Solar Dust, between old pain and forward motion, between the child below and the adult above. For a long time it seemed these spaces excluded one another. Gradually it became clear: what had been torn can be brought together. What was lost can return.

Within every person lives the one who was left behind,
and the one who one day comes back for him,
because no one else can.

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Psychoanalytic Commentary

The narrative engages with early layers of psychic life and the foundational structures of the Self. The descent into the well represents a return to primordial mental states where traces of abandonment, uncontained affect, and early trauma reside. The well and the child within it symbolize a split-off part of the Self that has remained inaccessible and outside symbolic representation.

The figure of the boy expresses primitive defenses—anger, omnipotence, mistrust—characteristic of the paranoid–schizoid position. In this psychic configuration, internal objects are experienced as threatening, and the Self as fragmented. The emerging contact between the adult aspect and the abandoned child part signifies a transition toward the depressive position, where ambivalence and vulnerability become tolerable and where the internal world may begin to integrate.

The two inner worlds—the World of Muted Constellations and the World of Solar Dust—metaphorically express a state of psychic splitting between past and present, fixed and fluid states. Such splitting is protective, allowing the psyche to survive incompatible emotional realities. Recognition of both worlds as parts of a unified internal landscape signals movement toward integration and the diminishing reliance on primitive defenses.

The episodes of panic reflect a somatic return of unprocessed affect—a phenomenon linked to deficits in symbolization. When affect cannot be fully represented mentally, it returns through the body. These states therefore should not be viewed as regression but as indicators of a domain where symbolic work remains incomplete.

The dream introduces elements of reparation. The guiding old woman functions as an inner object capable of supporting transitions. The large table and simple food represent the presence of a good internal object that can nourish, anchor, and stabilize the psyche. This suggests the development of an internal capacity for self-support and symbolic processing.

Overall, the narrative illustrates a process of psychic reassembly: first through acknowledging fragmented parts of the Self, then through tolerating contact with them, and ultimately through forming a more cohesive internal world. Depth “begins to speak” when the internal dialogue becomes possible and when early losses find a symbolic place within the structure of the Self.
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