Nothing returns to baseline. Not because something is damaged, but because baseline is no longer assumed.

The mind expects recovery as a quiet promise beneath experience. A return to normal. A settling back into the familiar.

Here, that promise is absent.

No recovery does not feel catastrophic. It feels simple. As if the idea of returning was always a story told after the fact.

What is present does not ask to be restored. It does not ask to be repaired. It does not even ask to be understood.

It continues.

There is a subtle discomfort in this, not as fear, but as the loss of an invisible contract. The contract that says: this will pass, this will resolve, this will return.

No recovery means nothing is waiting on the other side of the moment. No relief promised. No correction guaranteed.

And yet, life continues without that guarantee. Breath continues. Attention continues. The world continues.

This does not remove hope. Hope is not the subject here. What falls away is the expectation that experience must close cleanly.

Language arises carefully, because even naming this risks turning it into diagnosis. It is not diagnosis. It is contact.

Nothing resolves. Nothing resets. But nothing breaks.

And in no recovery, what remains is not despair, but the simple fact that the present does not owe a return.