Pattern Recognition or Paranoia?

what the Epstein files showed me about my whole life

The Pattern-Seeker

As an autistic kid who knew something was profoundly different about me but would never have guessed it was autism, I noticed patterns in everything. My brain works through global-first processing- I look for the frame before I look for the pieces. When you’re wired this way and the world feels hostile, you try to reverse-engineer it. I was searching for reality's source code, the underlying rules that would explain everything."

I needed an explanation for why the world was the way it was. Why I was here. Why everything hurt so much. How I could escape from it, or transcend it, or at least survive it. The world felt evil and chaotic, and I felt like a victim of something I couldn’t name.

Other people found comfort in connection. Meanwhile, I’d leave a party feeling like I’d left a warzone.

I grew up in a high control religion. I questioned it constantly—obsessively, really—but I still placed it above myself. I trusted it was real and true, and that I just wasn’t worthy enough to understand it yet.

The rules were many: Don’t trust your body—it will lead you astray. Don’t drink caffeine—it alters God’s design. Don’t watch R-rated movies—the world wants to corrupt you. Dozens of small prohibitions that added up to one big mandate: monitor yourself constantly. Is this thought okay? Is this feeling allowed? Am I staying within the lines?

I internalized the central message beneath all the rules: your instincts are wrong, your desires are corrupt, and you need an external system to tell you how to be. I was learning, very early, not to trust myself. Which was convenient, because I’d already learned that my way of experiencing the world was quite different from other people’s—so different that I couldn’t trust my own perceptions. I had to be the broken one.

So I learned to trust other people’s judgment over my own, even while being simultaneously convinced they couldn’t see as clearly as I could. The contradiction didn’t matter. If everyone else saw things one way and I saw them differently, I must be wrong. Right? The religion just formalized what I’d already figured out: don’t trust yourself, ever, even when you’re pretty sure you’re right.

Then a pattern emerged that would define my life. Every few years, I’d discover a new system or philosophy that completely shattered my previous worldview—and I do mean shattered, like the floor falling out from under me, like waking up in a different room—and I’d throw myself into it entirely, study it, create within it, try to live by it, and also keep questioning it because that’s just how my brain works—I can’t help it. And then, inevitably, something new would come along and shatter that framework too, and the cycle would start over. Each time I wondered if I was losing my fucking mind.

When I broke from Mormonism—my parents left when I was 12 and I followed—I landed hard in science because it felt like freedom—empirical, testable, real, no more invisible authorities, just observable reality. I clung to it. Then in some college class my eyes were opened to the fact that it was only white men I had been hearing from, that Western and Eastern modes of thought were vastly different, that male and female bodies were vastly different, and that the nepotism going on in scientific journals made all conclusions laughable. The floor dropped out again. Whoops.

My boyfriend taught me a new framework around then: weed heals all. And honestly? For a while, it did. Until it turned on me and compounded all my health problems. Another thing I couldn’t trust.

By then I was desperate for something that predated all the modern corruption, something ancient enough to be true. I started piecing together spiritual material that the oldest civilizations had in common—if multiple ancient cultures pointed to the same truths, maybe that was the real signal beneath all the noise. Around that time I had an experience during a cacao ceremony that shocked me and whatever I felt, I took it as proof there was much more to reality than I’d been taught. Was I crazy? Was I on my way to enlightenment?

After this so-called spiritual awakening, combined with all I had learned in college, I could see through a lot of the bullshit—giving our life force to jobs to get paid minimum wage and go home and watch TV, being fed literal poison, the whole system designed to keep us numb and compliant. I distrusted the government, of course—thought they were literally evil—and people rolled their eyes at me. When COVID hit, I distrusted the vaccine and even the virus itself. I could see it was a real illness, but I thought it might have a nefarious origin. People told me I was paranoid, conspiracy-brained. At least, that’s how it looked to me then. I worried too, whether I was seeing clearly or spiraling.

I discovered near-death experiences and fell deep into New Age spirituality because here was empirical evidence—people dying, coming back, reporting the same things—and here was a whole community telling me that consciousness creates reality, that we’re all connected, that love and light could heal everything. I threw myself into transcendence. Breathwork, carefully curated foods that ‘raised my vibration,’ hours of meditation—all to rise above the body, to transcend the ego, because the body was the trap, the illusion, the thing keeping me stuck in lower vibrations. I was dissociating and judging other people hard LOL.

Until that framework shattered too and suddenly I was all about the exact opposite—eat more meat, embody your anger, stop spiritually bypassing because the body isn’t the problem, disconnection from the body is the problem. Whiplash. Again. Was I grounding myself or just grasping at the next shiny thing? I didn’t know. I never knew.

Quantum physics came next—or at least YouTube videos about it at 3am. Double-slit experiments: the observer affects the observed, reality isn’t fixed, consciousness might be fundamental—and finally here was a framework that could hold both the spiritual experiences I’d had and the scientific rigor I craved. Then neuroscience, learning that the brain is filtering out millions of bits of information every second and our reality comes from structures that formed prelanguage, that the self is constructed and perception is limited, and maybe if I understood the mechanism of consciousness I could finally understand why nothing felt real. Why I didn’t feel real.

Each framework felt like the answer—not just an answer, but the thing that would finally make me stop feeling insane—and each one eventually revealed itself to be just another lens I was looking through, just another system telling me how to see. The cycle continued. I was either the world’s most dedicated truth-seeker or completely unhinged. Take your pick.

No Floor

I cycled through worldviews so fast that eventually my mind couldn’t keep up.

The breaking point came about five years ago when I was chronically ill—autism and other factors had worn my body down in ways I didn’t fully understand—and I was desperate for answers, so I did ayahuasca a bunch of times, searching for the pattern that would explain why my body was failing, why I couldn’t function in this world, why everything hurt so much.

Instead, ayahuasca pushed me further into a state where I couldn’t distinguish between symbolic meaning and literal reality and I started believing that the symbols appearing in my dreams were direct communications about what was actually happening in the world. The floor didn’t just drop out this time—there was no floor. I was connecting dots that weren’t there, or maybe they were there but I couldn’t hold them in any coherent way, and the debris from all those shattered frameworks had left my body, brain, and psyche so fractured that everything made perfect sense to me while everyone around me could see I was detached from reality.

Here’s what haunts me: the themes of the Epstein files that suddenly the whole world is dealing with—power, control, systemic abuse, sexual abuse—were all the same things I was obsessively concerned with during psychosis. I was seeing patterns of control and exploitation everywhere. I accused people in my own family of things that weren’t true. I was connecting dots that didn’t exist, seeing abuse where there was none. I was absolutely, undeniably wrong.

But the patterns I was obsessed with? Those were real. Just not where I was looking.

The Rabbit Hole has a Rabbit Hole

Fast forward to now. Recently I fell down a rabbit hole with the Epstein files and my brain latched onto them the way it always does when something doesn’t make sense—obsessively, compulsively trying to find the pattern, connecting dots on Reddit at 2am with my eyes burning, one more thread, one more connection, trying to map it out, the history of the world. Plus everything in the multiverse?

I kept trying to comfort myself with the narrative I’d been building: that oppressive systems are finally loosening their grip, both at the macro level and in our individual lives, that real change is coming. I was working so hard to stay positive, to keep my grip on reality.

But after days of consuming Epstein content, something shifted and I started asking different questions, not about him but about me, about all of us.

How have I decided what to believe throughout my life? Think of all the media I’ve consumed since I was a toddler. I thought about my years in school, how much of what I learned came straight from McGraw Hill textbooks—textbooks published by a company owned by Ghislaine Maxwell’s father in the 80s and 90s. The same family at the center of all of this. So what does that mean about everything I was taught? Cool. Cool cool cool.

I thought about how much time I spend consuming—we all do—and I wondered: what level of control has been exerted on me this whole time? On all of us?

My boyfriend helped me see something I’d somehow never put together: the wealthy have always controlled the technology. I mean, of course they have—they fund it, own it, direct it—but I’d never thought about what that actually means. Has the CIA really been dealing with aliens this whole time? Time travel? Have they been employing AI for decades? Are you fucking kidding me? What does this mean about all my experiences on earth? What have I been looking at this whole time?

And then there’s this: someone is controlling what gets leaked to us from the Epstein files. Someone chose what we see and what stays hidden. Which means even this—this thing I’m treating as evidence, as confirmation of patterns—is curated. Controlled. And what if it’s just a distraction from something else entirely? What if while I’m obsessing over these files, connecting these dots, building this narrative, the real manipulation is happening somewhere I’m not even looking? How do I reconcile that? How do I hold the possibility that these patterns are both real AND being used to direct my attention exactly where someone wants it? The rabbit hole has a rabbit hole and I don’t know which level of paranoia is actually appropriate anymore.

And here’s the thing that’s really fucking with me: my boyfriend’s dad used to tell us about the Rothschilds, adrenochrome, Hollywood, reptilians. He was obsessed with the Bible. A great researcher. And of course it sounded crazy—we’d listen politely and exchange glances and I’d think, okay, this is too far, this is where pattern-seeking becomes paranoia. He’s died since then. And now I’m looking at the Epstein files and I literally can’t believe that all of this stuff could possibly be true. But what if some of it is? How do I sort the signal from the noise when I can’t trust my own discernment, when I’ve been wrong about reality so many times before?

I got all worked up about all of this. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight. So I did what I always do—I reached for a framework to make sense of it. This time: systems theory. I coached myself through it, found a way to see the patterns that felt hopeful instead of terrifying. And this morning I posted an Instagram carousel because I thought maybe I could help other people do the same thing. I wanted people to take comfort in the idea that regimes built on extraction and erasure are collapsing because people are becoming more aware of them. I thought awareness meant change was imminent. I wanted to encourage all of us to feel and act in sovereignty in our own lives, believing that would ripple out and affect things at the macro level. I was trying so hard to stay positive, to find the hopeful pattern in all of this.

But then I started questioning that too. What if systems theory is just another framework I’m using to cope? What if it’s not revealing truth but just making me feel better? Is it somehow exploiting me and my energy the same way everything else has?

I used to know exactly what to do in moments like this because I’d learned it from spiritual influencers over the years, and I’d repeat it like a mantra: Don’t take this in, protect your energy, go outside, commune with nature.

But here’s the thing I’ve rarely admitted (even to myself): nature creeps me out. Monkeys kill for sport. They eat babies. Nature can be peaceful but it’s also violent and indifferent.

Yes, sunsets have made me cry, especially when I’m with one of the few people I’m close to, but just as often nature seems like an AI backdrop—the sun and moon as alien to me as anything else. Sometimes I hug a tree, trying so hard to connect to what I’ve been told is ancient wisdom, and I feel nothing. Just the same existential dread I’ve always felt. And then I’m furious at myself for not being able to feel what those spiritual people seem to feel so easily.

And those spiritual influencers telling me to bypass my anger—are they just white supremacists in yoga pants profiting off me ignoring my rage about the Epstein files, about all of it? (But also my brain literally cannot process that those files are real, that this happened, that it’s still happening.)

I have never felt at home in my body. I have never felt at home in nature. I have never felt at home with my family. I have never felt at home anywhere.

So what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to move through a reality that has never felt real to me? I’ve spent my entire life searching for a framework that would finally make sense of the chaos, that would make me make sense, and now I’m looking at the frameworks themselves and seeing control, manipulation, well-meaning bullshit, or some combination of all three. I’m either seeing the truth or losing my mind. Again. Still. Always.

I looked back at that Instagram post and deleted it. Was I helping people or was I just publicly coping? Was it insight or delusion? So I’m writing this instead—at least here I can admit I don’t have answers.

I’m at an impasse. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s real.

For now, I’m going to focus on the people right beside me. The ones I can see in person, not through a screen, and actually touch. And writing this shit out helped me immensely—at least while I was doing it, at least for now. I do believe there’s something about creating, about making something concrete when your mind can’t find purchase anywhere else. That’s all I’ve got.