It gets to a point where you have to stop fighting the world and start fighting your own mind. And that’s where I’ve been living, in cracks between voices that aren’t real and memories that are, and both hurt, they kill. 

People talk, they tell me I’m so strong, and I’ve survived so much, but they don’t see what survival looks like when your brain keeps replaying trauma like it’s stuck in a broken loop. Thoughts twist into knives you can’t pull out. You can’t do anything. They stole all of me and now I’m just what’s left. 

I live in images, I’m crumbs of the person I used to be. I’m trying to function while hearing things no one else hears, feeling things no one else feels. I’m terrified of things no one else can see. And nobody will understand me. I tried. I did everything they told me to. But it always came back. The noise. The fear. The feeling that I’m a problem no one knows how to fix, a burden to my family.

I became too much. I’m tired of apologizing for being sick. I have to say goodbye, not out of weakness but of exhaustion and guilt. Maybe my head will quiet. Maybe I can finally be still.