Sometimes all you can do is get through the day, the hour, or the moment. And it feels impossible to think beyond that.
Sure, that’s what survival looks like, but when it becomes your default, your normal, it slowly wears you down.
The toll it takes on both your body and mind is surprising, and it adds up over time.
It’s like having tunnel vision. While you focus on one thing, everything else falls away. Almost forgotten.
Even parts of yourself.
Your mental and physical health suffer no matter what you do.
And time, it slips by quietly. Weeks, months, even years pass, and only later do you realize what’s been lost.
You get caught up in making what feels like “logical” decisions. But in the process you lose sight of what you truly want. What’s actually best for you.
Yes logic matters. but so does passion. The things that drive you, your gut instincts, they matter too.
Take a chance.
Life is not about achieving what others decide success looks like.
What about happiness? Love? Friendship?
Your own dreams?
Why ignore what you feel?
Too often we don’t stop to consider the cost. To ask ourselves if it’s worth it to keep going the way we are.
Pushing through pain, ignoring the signals your body and mind send you, that’s not always strength.
In my life, there have been times when pushing through was a strength.
But there have been many more times when it has been one of my greatest weaknesses.
Ive let fear and anxiety rush me into decisions. Decisions that, if had been made with a little more faith in myself, might have turned out completely different.
Your mental and physical health is invaluable.
They are some of those things we don’t fully appreciate until it starts to fail.
So do what truly matters to you. Listen to what you feel.
Because you know what’s right for you. Not anyone else.
Hold onto the people and things that make you smile and laugh from the heart.
Those smiles and laughs are authentic and genuine. And they matter.
Pain is like choking on air while trying to keep your head above the water. Treading water to stay afloat, but you always feel it regardless. You can not see it but you know it’s there.
Reaching to pull out invisible knives from your gut and back that do not exist. Grasping in the night at nothing and dreaming of horrible, evil things.
‘Change your perspective,’ they say.
Well, this is the one I was born to, my own perspective. I can see someone else’s, of course, I usually go out of my way to do that. But I can’t change mine with just the snap of a finger. No matter how hard I desperately try. And I do try.
I feel what I feel, and forcing myself to feel the opposite seems almost impossible. Like a lie at times. Dismissive even. Of not only my pain but my struggle as a whole.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but part of me disagrees. It’s true, but sometimes what doesn’t kill you just doesn’t kill you. So you keep going because you can’t see any other choice besides the worst one.
That feeling when you’re trying so hard to keep it together and not show how much it hurts, while the constant breakdowns are literally killing you inside. it’s like you’re screaming for help, but no one can hear you.
They are tired of hearing me talk. About the things I never spoke of before most of all. Not realizing or remembering it was them who asked me about it, to talk about the darkness. Once I let it out, I thought it helped. It was burning inside my chest and inside my soul.
At first, it did help.
But then it didn’t. Because they weren’t the right people to open up to. It was all used to put me in a box. To label and define me. For them to feel superior, in some way.
But I am learning who the right people are.
Uninformed advice, never asked for, never wanted, came out of their mouths at every chance they deemed fit. Not seeing beyond their own need to hear themselves speak. Ignorance and condescension dripping from their every word.
I just need to shut up. Tell them it’s fine. That I’m fine. Like I used to. And just focus on surviving this. On staying alive. Exhaustion that feels like it’s a part of every cell in my body weighs so heavy. It feels pain is destroying my sanity at times.
Scaring me.
I don’t have it in me to try to show them they are wrong. It would be pointless.
I’ve tried. To them, they aren’t wrong.
Well, not when it comes to me, it seems. Or at least, they won’t admit when they are.
I don’t have anything to prove.
Some people choose, time and time again, to see me through their cloudy and damaged lens. To not take the time to actually listen. To hear how they speak. To see how they come across. Do they even hear the shit that comes out of their mouths? To them, I know nothing and am naive about most things.
I should have just kept my mouth shut. Stayed silent like before. But I’ve come to realize that I’m okay with their faulty perception of me. Because they don’t truly know me. And the ones who do, the ones who want to, have shown me that. In turn, I’ve been capable of getting to know them better as well.
At least some good came out of all this. That is something I’m grateful for. It’s truly all I have ever wanted and hoped for.
Thank God for silver linings. Especially the ones you didn’t expect or see coming.
Some people just don’t change. You can pour your heart into them, give them all the chances in the world, but they stay the same. Stubborn, stuck in their ways, dragging you down with them. You hope, you wait, you make excuses for them, thinking maybe this time will be different.
But it never is.
In part because they dont want change, despite all that they say otherwise. They remain who they are, flaws and all, and you’re left holding the bag of your own shattered expectations. It’s a hard truth to swallow, but some people just can’t be saved. They are who they are, and nothing you do will make a difference.
So you have to learn to let go, to save yourself. Because holding on to the hope that they’ll change will only break you in the end. Hope is a profound thing and can keep you alive, but it also can be your downfall if you let it. Sometimes, it’s freeing to just let that hope go, not hold onto it, no matter how much you love them.
What if you thought that if you were there for this one moment, on this one day, for someone you feel so much love for, yet so much anger, you could possibly get them to save themselves? And in doing so, finally stop years of madness they created around you and those you love? Stopping an insanity you feel you have been forced to live with for years.
What if you thought that if you are there for this moment, regardless of what they chose, that finally it would end? That somehow there will be some sort of peace? Desperate for it to end, needing it to, somehow. Feeling torn because there is so much underneath the surface, and the buildup to this one moment starts to stir it all up.
You try to deny and ignore what comes up, but it’s like a storm that suddenly is too big to escape. So many memories, thoughts, and emotions come up that it feels like it will consume you. And you almost want to let it; eager to just get it all over with so your insides can finally relax and heal.
Yet you know you still have to wait if you have any chance of making a difference or impact. Deep down, you know it may very well be pointless. Yet it still becomes almost all-consuming, and you don’t know how not to let it. You see that it has been building for a while now; you just didn’t or couldn’t see it coming before.
It all starts to eat you up from the inside out, and the pieces of yourself that you worked so hard to heal start to break.
You start wishing you could just hate this person that you still love with a desperation you constantly try to deny.
Would that make it easier? To hate them?
None of it makes any sense.
How can you have so much anger yet still so much love for someone who caused you so much pain?
Who hurt you so badly?
How can you be holding on but also letting go? Why do the good memories of them hurt more now? How can you feel they are only an obligation now, yet also like you need and want to be there? At least for this one last time, no matter what they decide? Knowing if you aren’t there, regardless of the outcome, you will regret it in so many ways.
You have to see this through. If not for them, then for you. Be there to see it end. One way or another, this is it. It has to be. Otherwise, it may very well kill you. And you know that is definitely not how it ends. You won’t let it be.
Anyone who has been sick with even the flu before, can tell you that when you are sick, after a few days, things blur together. You lose sleep, weight, and time.
Suddenly, it’s been weeks, months, and you realize you have forgotten what it’s like to breathe deep.
What it’s like to lie still and not want to scream out loud, for even just a moment. You forget everything and what it’s like to live, and you start to pray for death. All the time. It hurts to blink, yet your eyes won’t stay shut, and sleep won’t come.
Memories you thought you had forgotten about, come back to haunt you. The worst of the worst comes up from the dark with insane detail. It feels real, like it’s happening whenever you shut your eyes. You feel shocked by the evil of it all. You buried it long ago, so deep, so that you could try to deny it was still there.
Moaning constantly to keep the screams inside your chest. Pain rips through your gut. Convinced a hand is reaching inside you, twisting and pulling, until they pull a piece out. You look down to check, so sure there must be a part of you missing. You feel there should be a hole right through you.
That’s when your sanity starts to slip; things don’t make sense, and you can’t function. It feels it will never end, and you are absolutely convinced at the time it won’t. How could it?
Then one day you just have a day, a moment even, of relief. And I swear that moment feels like heaven. Your chest can breathe deeply again.
The weight on your head eases and you can see again, because before it was a fog that you were grasping at.
A stillness comes over you, and it feels like God.
You haven’t felt this still in what seems like forever. And you remember, this is what it’s like to feel, to live. How could you have forgotten this? Yet, next time, somehow you forget again. So you hold onto it for as long as you can and take it as gold. Until the next time.
Everything feels endless when we are in it, but everything is actually temporary. Everything. Remember that next time you are having a hard time or at a low moment. It will end, and the pain will ease. Nothing remains the same forever. Even the things we want to. It just doesn’t.
Living in the now and the then is like living in two alternate universes. I’m stuck between the two. I’m never fully in the past nor in the present.
I flicker and switch back and forth like a light switch.
It’s out of my control most of the time.
I’m not living at all in the end.
I’m dead inside. I’m a zombie. I’m numb.
I’m not sleeping, then I’m not eating.
Things shift, and reality blurs.
Days pass with no defining beginning or end.
Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing seems to matter.
I no longer care what happens. Sometimes to myself, most of all.
Things will play out how they are meant to.
For reasons, I can’t fully grasp, I’m still desperately trying to survive each day.
I’m grasping at anything to keep me afloat.
But the darkness below grabs hold of me, and I slip beneath.
Swallowing water, sinking slowly.
I’m no longer fighting anymore. I’m giving in.
And there is a sense of peace in that surrender.
Until something— or someone— pulls me up from above.
I choke, cough, and puke it all back up.
Gasping for air, disappointed instead of relieved.
Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t notice until I taste them on my lips.
Then her face flashes in my mind. The one who has always known me best. The one who survived so much alongside me for all those years, especially as kids.
The look I imagine on her face if she knew, imprints upon me.
My heart breaks at that image of her in my head.
It shatters me.
Confused, I wonder why the darkness didn’t take me.
It should have.
So why me? I am no one.
What is it that keeps me tethered to this earth?
Bound to this life?
No matter how hard I’ve tried to leave here, it, something, has me by the ankle. By the soul.
It won’t let me go. It keeps me here.
More than once now, it has forced me to stay.
I feel like a coward immediately after. A failure.
Ashamed I’m not strong enough. Ashamed, I still don’t want to be here.
I should feel lucky. Grateful instead.
And I do.
But most of the time, I just feel this sadness bone deep.
It can almost crush my chest with the weight it carries.
I don’t think I was ever meant for this world.
I fight it every day.
Some days more than others.
It’s a battle with myself.
One that drains me to the core.
I pray it ends.
Or that I find the strength one final time to end it.
I’ve already been given more chances than most.
One way or another, I will find a way out.
Free from those who chose to judge with smiles on their faces. Tearing me down while claiming they aren’t. Calling it love and concern instead.
The writing is on the wall, but it seems only I’m able to see it somehow. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to figure this out anymore. I want to be listened to. Truly heard. Empathized with. I want to be hugged and told it’s all going to be okay. Even if it isn’t. I want and need things to slow down. I’m tired of this brutal process. It’s never-ending. I’m always so tired. Of it all. Sooner or later, it may kill me. And I shouldn’t be, but I’m okay with that. Contradicting my own self. Why fight to live if dying feels like it would be such a relief? I have no idea. But I’m tired of having to keep doing it.
So tired.
But unable to sleep.
God, just give me peace tonight, and if you do, I promise I will fight again tomorrow.
Shannbud 