I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired. Everything hurts. I’m rotting from the inside out with this guilt and self-hatred that I can’t shut off. I wake up and the first thing I think is “Why am I still here?” I go to sleep wishing I’d never wake up. I wish I had one final reason that would drag me to do something about it, something I could never take back.

I'm standing in the middle of a world that would spin better without me. A weight would disappear from its surface. I’m not living, and I’m not dying either. I’m just stuck here. I’m stuck in the middle of being too much and never enough all at once. I don’t know how to carry this anymore.

The guilt claws and leaves deeply cut scars. My skin is frayed and I am bleeding. It’s eating me alive. Small pieces of me are going missing and I will never find them again. I don’t even want any pieces left. The guilt rips me and curls up inside my chest. It fits so perfectly there. It belongs there. Everything I do feels like a betrayal, not just to me, but to them. I know I’m the burden nobody talks about. I’m the one that started it all and everything will always lead back to me. It’s my fault yet nobody can see that.

The pain of others is my fault, and I can’t do anything to make it better; the only thing I have done is make things worse and worse for the people I love. I’m destroying everyone I have touched. I am the only thing to which you can trace the pain. It’s my fault. I see the weight I put on others, and it crushes me. I’m a problem that nobody knows how to fix. I feel the only way to fix it is by ending it all, so that nobody will ever have to worry, and everyone can move on as if I never caused any pain at all.

I’m a problem I don’t even know how to fix. I ruin everything I touch. I make people uncomfortable. I push them away. I hurt them without meaning to. And then I sit here, drowning in guilt, replaying every single mistake on a loop. I can’t make it stop.

I know people say things like “you’re not a burden,” but they don’t see me: the crying, the shutdowns, the constant thoughts, the way I freeze up when I’m supposed to talk. I keep slipping. I keep dragging people down with me, and I hate myself. This version of me, the thing that hurts everyone, that ruins everything good, I feel like I’m just delaying the inevitable. Like eventually I’ll mess up so badly that everyone will give up for good. And I don’t want to see that happen. I’d rather just be gone before I do more damage.

I feel like everything good is gone, like I already lost whatever chance I had at being okay. Now I’m just walking through the ashes. It hasn’t been fine in a long time. And no one sees it. Everyone thinks it’s all their problem, or it’s anyone but me, even though it’s me too. I’m here with nobody seeing, or knowing. I’m here with nothing. Nobody even asks. I just want it to stop.

Stop looking through those rose colored glasses, see the storm I’m hiding, and run away before you get soaked. I leave a mess behind everywhere I go, and it’s blamed on everyone but me. It’s my fault and mine only. I try to clean the mess up, but it just makes the mess worse. Every cloth I grab gets soaked and never dries. My shadow walks ahead of me, knowing I won’t follow much longer.

I can’t stay here with these thoughts and with these things that want to lead me over the bridge into the ditch—with the rocks, the cracking, the hurting, the screaming, and the dark. I’m scared of the dark. I can’t stay with the things that keep leading me the way I shouldn’t go. I will follow them soon, and they can finally have me. And these things that talk to me can finally be put to rest. These voices that want me gone can finally stop hating me for fighting. If anyone, maybe they will love me. They can be happy, and I can say sorry for fighting so long. Normally, disappearing is selfish, but in my case, this is the most selfless thing I can and will ever do.