Waking up feels like a task.
Breathing, an obligation.
Each day repeats with no meaning.
I move, because stopping feels worse.
But moving leads nowhere.

People say, “keep going.”
They don’t know what they’re asking.
They’ve never carried this weight.
Or maybe they have, and they’re lying too.

Food has no taste.
Sleep brings no rest.
Laughter sounds distant.
Hope feels fake.

There is no dream.
No fire.
No reason.

I do what’s needed.
I wear the face.
I show up.

But inside,
Nothing changes.
Nothing feels.

Living isn’t living.
It’s just not dying yet.

It wasn’t the act,
but the knowing.

The way silence held the weight
of a promise once made,
then broken
with ease.

Not a mistake,
a decision,
deliberate,
measured
in the echo of things once said.

“I won’t, I promise.”
became
“it just happened.”

But nothing just happens
when you already know
what it would do
to someone
who trusted you
anyway.

They watched the ground split open
and still walked
the fault line.

Not blind.
Just willing.

And I, the after.
The leftover ache.
Learning again
that people can mean what they say
only until it’s inconvenient.

I don't remember when it started.
The silence.
The leaving.
The ache that never asks for attention,
but never stops asking to be felt.

People say time heals.
I think it just teaches you how to walk
while carrying everything you've buried.
Grief has no finish line.
It just learns to sit beside you,
uninvited,
unmoving.

I've lost more than names.
I've lost voices I used to hear every day.
Hands I used to hold.
Warmth I used to believe would stay.
And not all of them died,
some just left,
as if I was easy to unlove.

My father is a memory now.
So are my dogs.
So are the parts of me
that once believed the world could be soft.

And the worst part?
I keep trying.
I still open up,
still let people in,
even when the past keeps warning me not to.

But they always go.
Quietly.
Suddenly.
Like they were never here to begin with.

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.
Other times I'm just too tired to wonder.

I laugh with people.
I listen.
I stay up helping everyone else heal,
but I come home to an empty inbox.
To a room that forgets I exist
the moment I close the door.

It's not just loneliness.
It's being unseen,
even when you're right in front of them.
It's realizing your absence
doesn't interrupt anyone's life but your own.

I've cried in the dark
so no one would have to carry it.
I've hidden so much pain
just to be easier to love.
And still, they leave.

Still,
they leave.

I wish I was cold.
Detached.
Untouched by it all.
But I'm not.
I'm soft.
I'm breaking and still offering my hands.
I'm hurting and still hoping someone
might choose to stay.

Even now,
I want to be seen.
Not for what I pretend to be,
but for all of it,
the mess,
the ache,
the heart that never stopped opening,
even when it kept getting torn apart.

If I am a story,
I am one no one finishes reading.
But I write myself anyway.

Just in case someone
ever wants to know how it ends.

It wasn't just someone walking away.
It was the quiet that followed.
The kind that sits in your chest
long after the door has closed,
echoing in a house that once felt full.

I lost the way I spoke without thinking.
I lost the weight of being understood.
I lost the habit of reaching for a hand
that's no longer there,
the instinct to share something small,
a thought, a laugh, a bad day,
and the grief when no one replies.

There are no loud endings.
Just days that look the same,
measured only by what's missing.
Sleep that doesn't rest,
meals eaten out of necessity,
a world that keeps spinning
when I feel stuck in a moment
that already passed.

I lost more than I can explain,
and maybe I'm still losing.
Not in pieces,
but slowly, quietly,
in ways no one sees.

Funny,
how people break promises
like twigs underfoot,
loud enough to hear,
small enough to ignore.

They hand you a vow
with velvet words,
tie it in ribbons,
say "You can trust me."
You do.

Then comes the silence.
The flinch.
The "Why are you so sensitive?"
As if it wasn’t them
who lit the match
and called the smoke your imagination.

They break it,
the promise, the trust,
sometimes the last bit of you
that believed people mean what they say.

Then they watch you bleed
and ask why you’re making such a mess.

If I disappear quietly,
don’t paint me as a tragedy,
just remember I was always trying.

Trying to do better,
for everyone, for myself,
even when I was running on empty.

I reached out first.
Again and again.
Fought through silence,
through the ache of being easy to forget.

I stayed kind
when the world gave me every reason not to be.
I answered quickly,
waited slowly,
hoped stupidly.

All I ever wanted
was to matter without having to fight for it.

But I got tired of proving I deserve space.
Tired of showing up for people
who didn’t notice when I went quiet.

"Trying to do better",
that was always my line.
Even when I didn’t know what better looked like anymore.
Even when it felt like I was the only one still trying.

So if one day I don’t make it,
don’t say I gave up.
Just say I ran out of places
to put all the weight I carried
for far too long
without anyone noticing.

I never wanted anything more
than to be okay.

I swear,
I tried.

There's a light
coming in under the door.
Too dim to be helpful,
too steady to ignore.

You forgot what you came here for,
but now that you're here,
you stay anyway.

A memory brushes past.
Not clearly.
Just enough to make your chest tighten
without knowing why.

The room feels too still.
You hear your own breathing,
then try not to.

Something inside wants to speak,
but the words don't fit right.
Like shoes a size too small.
You leave them at the threshold.

The silence turns warm.
Not comforting,
but familiar.
You've met it before,
and it hasn't changed much.

Then,
a shift.
Barely there.
The kind that makes your eyes sting,
but not from pain.

You look away.
Or maybe inward.
And just like that,
you feel everything,
then nothing,
then everything again.