The thoughts arrive in whispers,
then pile into a storm,
crowding every corner of my mind
until there’s nowhere left to hide.
Anxiety settles in my stomach,
a sickness I recognize too well,
and panic flickers in my chest-
the first spark before the fire.
I know what’s coming.
I tell myself I could stop it.
If I were stronger.
If I could hold on long enough.
I know every trick, every step, every breath
I’m supposed to take.
But my body betrays me.
It shuts down without warning.
My limbs become strangers.
The air slips through my fingers
before it ever reaches my lungs.
The room tilts.
My head spins.
The world blurs at the edges.
And suddenly,
I’m right back where I started-
trapped inside the same circle,
watching it close around me again.
Alone.
Helpless.
Uncontrollable.
Knowing exactly what is happening,
and powerless to stop it.
2d ago
Jun 1, 2026 at 12:35 PM UTC
For three days in a row,
four different teachers asked me the same question:
“Are you okay?”
Not the kind of question people ask in passing,
not the kind they forget before you’ve answered.
The kind that lingers.
The kind that means,
I see something you’re trying desperately to hide.
“Are you sick?”
“Are you dizzy?”
“Do you need to talk to someone?”
“Do you want to step outside?”
And every time,
I smiled the best smile I could manage,
while carrying a storm no one was supposed to notice.
But one teacher did.
The sweetest soul,
the kindest heart,
the kind of person who makes the world feel softer just by being in it.
She sat beside me.
She didn’t rush.
She didn’t pressure.
She didn’t fill the silence with empty words.
She simply stayed.
And somehow,
that made everything harder.
Because when someone is that gentle,
the walls you’ve spent so long building begin to crack.
She could see I was struggling.
I felt my hands shaking.
My throat tightening.
My eyes burning.
Tears gathered before I could stop them.
She asked what was wrong,
and I wanted to answer.
I wanted to tell her everything.
But the weight of my tears sat heavier than my words,
and all I could do was swallow them back
and stare at the floor.
So she spoke instead.
“Be strong.”
Not as a command.
As a promise.
She told me not to worry about the work.
Not to force myself through the pain.
Not to pretend.
“Just sit,” she said.
“Take a moment.
Get yourself together.”
As if my heart mattered more than any lesson.
Then the bell rang.
The class ended.
But her kindness didn’t.
She asked to speak with me.
And then she hugged me.
A simple thing.
A small thing.
Yet somehow it felt like being caught
when I was falling apart.
After that,
she kept checking on me.
Pulling me out of class for a while,
letting me sit with her,
talking when I could,
sitting in silence when I couldn’t.
Day after day,
she showed up.
Day after day,
she reminded me that someone cared.
And slowly,
through all the hurt,
through all the loneliness,
through all the days that felt unbearably heavy,
I realized something.
The loneliest moments are not always proof that you are alone.
Sometimes,
they are simply the moments before someone reaches for you.
Because I was seen.
I was heard.
I was cared for.
And in the middle of a season that taught me how much pain a heart can carry,
someone taught me how much love it can hold.
The day I thought I was disappearing,
someone noticed.
And that changed everything.
3d ago
May 31, 2026 at 2:48 PM UTC
I have been sinking into the mattress
for eleven quiet days,
as if the bed has learned my shape
and decided to keep me.
Getting up feels like lifting
a body that no longer belongs to me-
every movement taxed,
every breath negotiated.
The world waits outside-
school bells, cold air,
voices that still remember my name-
but I stay buried beneath fabric and silence.
My mother hovers at the doorway,
her worry stitched into every question.
She speaks of attendance, of tomorrow,
of things that continue without me.
“Do you want to stay home again?”
she asks,
as if I have a choice
that isn’t already made.
“Yes,” I say,
soft as something already disappearing.
She calls the doctor,
builds me a safer story-
a cough, a runny nose,
something small and forgivable.
A clean, pale lie
to cover the darker truth:
that I am not sick in a way
that shows up on paper,
only in the weight of staying still,
in the quiet refusal of my bones,
in the slow unraveling
no one can quite diagnose.
Mar 29
Mar 29, 2026 at 8:01 PM UTC
I feel misplaced in these walls,
like I slipped into a life not meant for me-
a shadow wearing someone else’s name.
This isn’t home.
Home doesn’t watch you like that.
Doesn’t wait-quiet, patient-
for you to disappear.
I am a guest that overstayed,
a breath held too long in borrowed air,
a presence that tightens the room.
I search for a corner that won’t reject me,
a space where I don’t fracture the silence-
where I am not the reason
for raised voices,
for tension stitched into every second.
But every place feels forbidden.
Every step echoes like a mistake.
So I shrink-
into the bed,
into the chair,
into the hollow stare of the mirror
that doesn’t recognize me anymore.
I drift in circles inside this room,
a ghost rehearsing how to exist quietly.
Even my own body feels like trespass.
Hunger becomes a question.
Thirst feels like theft.
The kitchen-
a line I shouldn’t cross.
The water-
not mine to take.
Even the simplest rituals-
washing, breathing, being-
feel like crimes I haven’t been forgiven for yet.
As if somewhere, unseen,
there’s a rulebook written in silence,
and I’ve broken every page of it
just by being here.
So I wait.
For permission.
For absence.
For the moment I finally fade enough
to belong nowhere at all.
Mar 22
Mar 22, 2026 at 10:43 AM UTC
I couldn’t sleep-
not because the night was loud,
but because it listened.
Each time I closed my eyes,
something answered.
A dream-
no, not a dream,
because I was still there,
still breathing,
still trapped in the waking.
Reality bent in silence,
stitched itself behind my eyelids.
And there-
I saw it.
Myself.
Not whole.
Not steady.
A reflection unraveling-
confused,
afraid,
drowning in thoughts with no edges.
I was lost
in a village that didn’t exist,
streets folding into themselves,
doors leading nowhere,
every path whispering: stay.
I opened my eyes-
escaped,
or thought I did.
I reached for something soft,
something warm-
a memory,
a lie,
a place where waves breathe for you.
But comfort wouldn’t come.
So I tried again-
closed my eyes,
begged the dark for a beach,
for light,
for anything but me.
Nothing answered.
Only the echo of myself,
waiting.
I opened my eyes-
too fast,
too late.
My lungs forgot their purpose.
Air turned to glass.
Each breath shattered inside me.
I clawed at the invisible,
choking on nothing,
on everything,
on the weight of being awake
when I shouldn’t have been.
The night pressed closer.
Watched.
I never slept after that.
And whatever found me there-
between sight and dream,
between breath and silence-
it hasn’t left.
Mar 21
Mar 21, 2026 at 9:07 AM UTC
I am a house with no doors,
an echo that never learned how to fade.
Anxious. Depressed.
Sad feels too small a word
for something that lives in my bones.
Please save me, Dad-
but the word Dad feels borrowed,
like a coat that never fit.
Where were you
when I was learning how to spell your name
with questions instead of letters?
Why does your absence
feel louder than most people’s presence?
I wanted something simple-
a normal dad,
the kind that shows up in stories
and stays.
But you’re what I’ve got,
a ghost that visits
just long enough
to haunt.
And you say “lately” like pain has an expiration date-
but lately means always.
Lately means every birthday, every silence,
every time I looked at the door
and learned it wouldn’t open for me.
You’re not in my life-
that’s the easy version.
The one I hand out
when people ask.
Because the truth
is too heavy to carry in conversation.
I can’t say
you broke things that weren’t yours to break.
That you built another life
in another country
and left me out of it
like I was optional.
I can’t say
you arrive like a visitor
in a place you helped create,
as if I’m just a stop
on your way to somewhere better.
I can’t say
your hands taught me fear
before they ever taught me love.
That your words
cut deeper than silence ever could.
I can’t say
I waited alone at school
watching the sky dim,
wondering if I mattered enough
to be remembered.
I can’t say
you were always somewhere else-
lost in a screen,
in someone else,
in anything that wasn’t me.
So I hug you
like it’s survival,
like refusal might shatter something worse.
I wear love like a mask,
tight against my skin,
until I forget
what my real face feels like.
Because how do you love
a person who never calls?
Who never asks
if you made it through the day?
Who never says
the three words
that could have saved you
a thousand times?
I am still here,
waiting in the space
you never filled.
And the hardest part is-
I don’t just miss you.
I miss
who you were supposed to be.
Mar 19
Mar 19, 2026 at 11:06 AM UTC
She notices the silence before I do-
the way I slip
between seconds,
unreachable.
My name falls from her lips
like a stone into a well.
No echo comes back.
“Are you here?” she asks,
as if I might have already left
my body behind.
“I’m fine,” I almost say-
but the word rots in my throat,
so I nod instead,
a puppet with cut strings.
And then I’m gone again.
Not asleep.
Not dreaming.
Just buried-
under the weight of my own mind,
where thoughts don’t speak,
they suffocate.
She calls me back once more,
gentler this time,
like you would wake something fragile
or dangerous.
“Did something happen?”
Everything did.
Nothing did.
I smile.
The kind of smile
that feels like cracking glass.
I sit so still
even time seems uncomfortable around me.
The air thickens.
People notice.
“What’s wrong with you?”
someone whispers beside me,
like I’ve become a problem to solve.
“Nothing.”
The easiest lie.
The heaviest one.
“Yeah,” she says,
“I can see that-
nothing’s wrong,
but you look like you’re disappearing.”
The teacher’s voice cuts through-
clinical, distant:
“Are you feeling sick?
Do you need to leave?”
If only it were that simple.
I smile again.
My face performs.
My eyes betray everything.
I can feel her searching for me
inside my own face-
so I look back.
And for a second,
I wonder if she sees it:
the hollow,
the static,
the quiet collapse.
I don’t speak again.
I just sit-
a body in a chair,
a mind in ruins,
staring at nothing
like it might stare back.
At the end,
she asks about next week-
tests, understanding,
the future.
As if I’m still part of it.
“Mhm,” I mumble,
a ghost agreeing to exist.
And then I leave-
or maybe
I was never really there.
Mar 18
Mar 18, 2026 at 2:32 PM UTC
We sit in glowing rectangles,
two faces stitched together by weak signal and stronger love,
laughing like nothing has teeth in this world,
like the dark doesn’t wait just outside the frame.
We talk about everything-
and nothing-
the kind of nothing that keeps me breathing,
the kind of everything that makes me forget
how heavy my chest feels when I’m alone.
Sometimes this is enough
to trick my soul into eating again,
to make happiness bloom like a lie I’m willing to believe.
I smile-
not even noticing when it starts.
She looks at me
like I am still whole.
She calls me her world,
and I let her,
even though mine is quietly collapsing
behind my eyes.
She is my heart,
my pulse when mine stutters,
my light-
too bright to let her see
the shadows I’ve been feeding.
She tells me not to drink too much,
not to drown myself in smoke and silence,
as if she can sense the way I disappear
in smaller, quieter ways.
Her messages come like lifelines-
“Are you okay?”
-and I always answer just enough
to keep her from breaking.
Because she doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know
how close I’ve come to vanishing,
how I’ve stood on the edge of myself
and leaned forward.
She doesn’t know
how I poison my lungs
just to feel something stay.
She doesn’t know
that my world is slipping-
grades falling,
teachers watching,
pieces of me unraveling in plain sight.
She doesn’t know
that every day
feels like a quiet rehearsal
for disappearing.
And I will never let her know.
I would swallow every darkness twice
if it meant her light stayed untouched.
I would bury myself alive in silence
just to keep her laughing
on the other side of a screen.
Because she is not just my sister-
she is the reason I am still here,
the reason I hesitate
when the void calls my name.
She is my whole life.
And if loving her
means breaking alone in the dark,
then I will.
Mar 18
Mar 18, 2026 at 2:05 PM UTC
The hair tie buried itself in my hair
like it knew I wouldn’t fight hard enough.
I pulled at it,
but the strands only tightened-
a quiet knot I couldn’t undo.
The brush waited.
I couldn’t lift it.
So I went to my mother crying,
head bowed like a child
who lost something small
but felt it break something bigger.
She didn’t ask.
She freed the knot,
brushed my hair slowly,
washed it,
blew it dry in warm quiet.
Then she braided it
the way she did
when I was five.
Her hands knew
I’m not five.
I could do it myself.
If my mind
would let me.
Mar 16
Mar 16, 2026 at 3:47 PM UTC
It was never about
the number glowing cold on the scale.
It was always the mirror-
the way my reflection whispers lies
only I can hear.
It’s in the clothes I choose,
the way fabric touches skin
like a question I can’t answer.
It’s in the quiet math of the day:
how much I ate,
how much I didn’t,
how much guilt weighs
more than any number ever could.
I can look exactly the same-
the same bones,
the same body-
but if I eat
the mirror grows cruel.
It stretches me into something larger,
something unbearable.
And if I don’t eat,
suddenly I feel smaller,
lighter-
as if hunger could carve me
into someone worth seeing.
I know it lives in my head.
I know it’s in my mind.
But knowing doesn’t quiet the voice.
So I stay silent.
I don’t eat-
unless I have to,
unless my mom is watching.
And afterward comes the flood:
guilt,
shame,
a slow collapsing inside my chest
like a building nobody noticed falling.
I feel like I’m dying
somewhere deep inside-
a quiet kind of dying
that leaves no marks
anyone else can see.
Sometimes I wish I could scream,
loud enough
for someone to finally understand.
But my heart doesn’t work that way.
Instead I hide.
I smooth my face into something normal.
I pretend I’m okay.
I pretend I’m fine.
But lately
the mask keeps slipping.
The motivation to pretend
has disappeared somewhere
between sleepless nights
and silent lunches.
Now the sadness inside my head
spreads like fog,
thick and endless.
I don’t smile anymore.
I don’t laugh.
I just sit inside the quiet
and let the hours pass through me.
People notice something is wrong.
I can see it in their eyes.
They ask,
“What’s going on?”
And suddenly
my voice disappears.
I can’t explain it.
I can’t even say
that nothing’s wrong.
The words simply refuse
to exist.
So instead
I unravel slowly
in front of everyone at school-
threads of me falling loose
one by one.
I’m ashamed.
Embarrassed.
But I’m too tired
to keep pretending
that everything is normal.
Because it isn’t.
I am drowning
in water no one else can see,
reaching for air
that never quite reaches my lungs.
And some days
the thought creeps in-
quiet and dangerous-
that maybe
if I just stopped fighting,
the water would finally
be still.
Mar 15
Mar 15, 2026 at 12:26 PM UTC