I read your message and locked my phone away. Then I picked it up again, opened it, and read it a second time. Then a third. Then a fourth. Each time, I seemed to find a different emotion waiting for me. First, there was anger. Then sadness. Then disappointment. Eventually, all of those feelings settled into something quieter and heavier. Defeat.

At first, I assumed it was closure. I thought it was your way of saying, I’m sorry, but I can’t be what you need me to be.The strange thing is, I think I had already made peace with that possibility long before your message arrived. I had spent enough nights wrestling with reality to understand that some people come into your life only to leave before they become what you hoped they would. Hearing you finally say it out loud would have hurt, but it would have at least made sense.

A part of me even wanted to thank you for being honest. There was a small part of me that appreciated finally being given the truth instead of another question to carry around. But gratitude felt impossible. I could not bring myself to applaud the smallest act of kindness after enduring so many moments that had felt careless. Honesty should not feel extraordinary. It should not feel like a gift. It should be the bare minimum. So while I appreciated it, I could not celebrate it.

Then the phone rang.

It was you.

And despite everything, I answered without hesitation.

The conversation felt familiar in a way that almost annoyed me. It was so easy to slip back into it, so easy to forget all the reasons I had spent days trying to let you go. My heart immediately softened. It loved wherever the conversation seemed to be heading. It loved the ease of it, the familiarity of your voice, the possibility that maybe things were not as final as I had convinced myself they were. But while my heart was leaning into the conversation, my mind was resisting every step of the way.

I could not ignore what had happened. I could not pretend that you could disappear when it suited you and reappear when you felt ready. I could not keep making room for someone who seemed unsure whether they wanted to stay. There comes a point where understanding someone starts looking a lot like abandoning yourself, and I was dangerously close to that line.

What bothered me most was when you said you knew I could never hate you. The certainty of it irritated me more than I expected. I hated how confident you sounded, as though my forgiveness was guaranteed. As though no matter what happened, no matter how many times I was disappointed, I would always find a way to understand you. It felt unfair that you could be so sure of something that I myself was still trying to figure out.

Why couldn’t I hate you?

I had every reason to.

I could make a list if I wanted to. I could point to every moment that hurt, every unanswered question, every time I felt forgotten. I could revisit the waiting, the confusion, the feeling of being suspended between hope and reality. If I truly wanted to hate you, there was enough material there to build a convincing argument.

But the truth is, I didn’t hate you.

What I hated was myself.

I hated what I had become over you. I hated how much power I had given a situation that should have been so simple. I hated how much of my peace I sacrificed trying to understand someone who seemed unwilling or unable to explain himself. Most of all, I hated the lengths I went to in order to forget you. The distractions. The rationalizations. The bargaining. The desperate attempts to convince myself I did not care when I clearly did.

For days, I walked around believing I meant nothing to you. I told myself that if I mattered, things would be different. If I mattered, you would show up. If I mattered, I would not be left guessing. Every silence became evidence. Every absence became proof. Every disappointment reinforced the story I was beginning to tell myself.

And yet, somewhere beneath all of that, my heart refused to cooperate.

No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, there was always a small voice whispering that you cared. I dismissed it constantly. I told myself it was delusion. I told myself it was wishful thinking. I told myself it was simply my heart trying to ease its own pain. But it persisted anyway, quietly insisting on seeing something good in you even when I was trying my hardest not to.

So I waited.

I waited for messages. I waited for explanations. I waited for effort. I waited for some sign that the connection I felt had not existed entirely inside my own head. I kept waiting for someone who, from my perspective, simply was not showing up.

And after a while, I started feeling foolish.

I would catch myself checking my phone and immediately feel embarrassed. I would replay conversations and wonder what exactly I was searching for. I would sit with my own disappointment and think, What are you doing? Why are you still doing this?

That may be the hardest thing to forgive. Not what you did, but what your absence convinced me to think about myself. The way I started measuring my worth against your willingness to show up. The way I allowed your inconsistency to become a reflection of my value. The way I slowly began questioning things about myself that had nothing to do with me at all.

And after all of that, after the waiting and the confusion, after all the nights spent trying to make sense of things that made no sense, after all the moments I spent feeling unwanted, unseen, and insignificant, you simply get to say you’re sorry?

You simply get to arrive with an apology after I have already carried the weight of everything that made the apology necessary.

I think that is what hurt the most. Not the apology itself, because I genuinely believe you meant it. Not even the fact that you were sorry. What hurt was realizing that while you were apologizing for a wound, I had already lived through it. I had already spent days bleeding from it. I had already questioned myself because of it.

By the time the apology arrived, the damage had already done its work.

There are some pains in life you convince yourself you have outgrown. Certain heartbreaks, certain humiliations, certain emotional collapses you swear will never find their way back to you once you become older, wiser, more self-aware. You tell yourself that experience alone should have made you immune to this kind of unraveling. That at this age, after everything you have already survived, you would know better. You would choose better. You would protect yourself better.

And yet somehow, here I am.

I never imagined I would have to sit with feelings like this again, let alone write about them. It feels almost absurd to admit it out loud, because a part of me genuinely believed this chapter of my life had closed years ago. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this familiar ache that quietly settles into your chest and turns even ordinary moments heavy. It simply was not supposed to happen again.

But it did.

There are moments where it feels as though my entire world has tilted slightly off its axis. Not in the catastrophic, life-destroying way it once did years ago, perhaps because time has made me stronger, or maybe because experience has taught me how to survive pain without completely falling apart. But even then, there is something deeply humiliating about discovering that you can still be wounded this way. That you can still care this deeply. That despite all your caution, all your self-awareness, all the walls you carefully built over the years, another person can still reach into the softest parts of you and leave you questioning everything.

What makes it worse is that none of it feels entirely irrational. I wish I could dismiss it as insecurity or overthinking, something imagined and exaggerated by fear. But there are facts. Fragments of truth I cannot unsee, details I cannot comfortably explain away no matter how desperately I try to. And so I find myself suspended between denial and acceptance, between wanting to protect my peace and wanting to hold onto the version of reality that hurts less.

It is an exhausting place to exist in.

Still, I am trying very hard not to punish myself for being human. Because despite everything, despite how embarrassing vulnerability can feel when things do not unfold the way you hoped, there is nothing inherently shameful about caring deeply. There is nothing pathetic about wanting something wholeheartedly and pursuing it with sincerity. We live in a world that often glorifies emotional detachment as strength, as though loving carefully is somehow wiser than loving honestly. But I do not believe that anymore.

To feel deeply is not weakness. To try, despite the risk of disappointment, is not foolishness. To place your heart into something and hope for tenderness in return is one of the most human things a person can do.

And perhaps that is what I am trying to remind myself now: that even if this leaves bruises, even if it unsettles me, even if it forces me to confront parts of myself I thought I had long mastered, it still does not make me weak for having cared.

You want to know pain?

I will tell you about pain.

For a long time I was getting more and more frustrated every day, living in a constant state of uncertainty. Waiting for the floor to fall through at any minute. It felt like walking on a tightrope when my balance was already awful.

I was fighting for my life.

But I knew I loved him. I knew I loved him enough to put myself through it. And somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that if I could survive the mess we were in, we would eventually reach a happier place together. A calmer place. A place where everything would finally make sense.

I thought that would be our forever.

So I pushed myself to be strong. I told myself to be patient. Even when I knew I was betraying myself in the process, I believed it would be worth it. I believed he would eventually love me enough to make up for everything I had endured.

I was so certain about my love.

The only thing I was never certain about was whether he would choose me.

Until the very last minute, I did not know.

He prolonged the uncertainty. He delayed decisions. He let the tension stretch day after day while I carried emotions that were heavier than anything I had ever carried before.

Eventually, like any human being pushed to the edge, I imploded.

And the worst part was that I imploded alone.

I was isolated even in my collapse. I was not loved in that moment. I received very little compassion. When I think about it now, it still hurts. I remember feeling like I was being buried underground, like sand was being thrown over me while I was still breathing beneath it.

I felt lower than low.

I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

For two days after that moment, I sank deeper into myself. I tried to stay afloat, but it felt inevitable that I would drown.

And in that darkness, instead of being lifted up, I was given even more pain.

You know the phrase about kicking someone when they are already down? Even that does not fully describe the hell I experienced.

Eventually I stopped fighting.

I needed escape. I needed relief. I needed anything other than the unbearable feeling sitting in my chest.

Anything but that.

So at 3:40 in the morning, on the 25th of November 2024, I did something I had sworn I would never do again. Something I had not done in over a decade. Something I had always been too afraid to repeat.

But that night the pain was greater than fear.

And I bled.

I watched myself bleed. I watched the pain sink into my body and, for a moment, I allowed myself to become numb.

I did not think it through. I was not in a place where thinking was possible. I just needed to escape the awful way he had made me feel. His abusive words were still ringing in my ears. I was still in disbelief that after all the love I had given him, this was how I was being repaid.

And then suddenly it was too late.

Blood stained the pages that should have been filled with ink. A strange, dark aesthetic formed in front of me. My pain had created its own visual memory.

A tragic snapshot of the moment.

But the thing is, it did not stop.

I thought it would stop. It did not.

That was when panic set in.

What do I do now? Who do I call?

And the truth was that I had no one.

I certainly could not call the person whose words had pushed me so far into that darkness.

So, terrified, I pulled myself together and went to the emergency room alone.

I had to. I did not have a choice.

Calling a cab and walking into that hospital was one of the most humiliating moments of my life. I felt helpless. I felt ashamed.

Why did I do this? How did I let myself fall so far down?

Had I not promised myself years ago that I would never return to that place?

Had I not promised my younger self that we would do better?

Oh God. I am so sorry.

I walked into the ER and showed them my wounds.

I was not prepared for the look in their eyes. The pity. The sadness. The concern. I was trying so hard to appear strong despite the obvious state I was in.

They treated me quickly and with care.

They asked about my mental health history. I told them the truth. That I was already on SSRIs. That I had both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. That I was trying to do the right things to stay well.

For the first time in a long time, doctors did not disappoint me. For the first time it felt like someone understood that pain can exist even when you are trying your best.

But it did not change the reality.

I needed eight stitches.

Eight stitches for one moment of collapse.

I left the hospital around six in the morning. They were hesitant to send me home alone, but they did.

He knew what had happened.

But he could not come.

Instead he was angry.

He eventually came to see me that evening, around seven o’clock. The compassion felt half hearted. And in that moment I realized something devastating.

Even my life felt like it carried very little value.

What made everything worse was what followed. Somehow rumors began spreading. I was taunted for what I had done. I was accused of doing it for attention, as if pain like that could ever be a performance.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

But who would know?

Who would ever truly know what I felt that night? What it took for a person who had fought so hard to stay strong to finally collapse?

The truth is that no one can love you enough to save you from yourself if you are the one choosing to drink poison.

And that realization was its own kind of pain.

Living through that moment. Hiding my scars for months. Trying to love myself again after feeling betrayed by my own hands.

Time has a strange way of softening memories. One day I will forget exactly how it felt to be sitting on that floor.

But the body remembers.

The body remembers everything.

It remembers the pain. It remembers the moment you broke. And it remembers the moment you chose to survive.

And strangely, when I look back now, I do not only see weakness.

I see strength.

Because if I had not stopped where I did that night, I might have done something even worse.

And the fact that I stopped there tells me something important.

Even in the darkest moment of my life, some part of me still chose to live.

[From the Diaries]

The way this year started, I should’ve known not to hope for anything more.

It started with this feeling: a tight knot in my chest, nerves pulling at each other, my body showing all the signs of discomfort. A never-ending anticipation of things going from wrong to worse. A constant cycle of terrible and utterly disheartening surprises.

That was the start of this year.

It’s September now. My heart is in a bigger mess than it used to be. The pain is the same, but I’m sabotaging myself more. Maybe I just got tired of being good.

When I felt this way at the end of last year, that’s when life nearly collapsed. I had someone with me who would love and comfort me. But for reasons I will never understand, none of that seemed comforting.

I’m a fully grown adult who has managed every crisis I’ve ever come across on my own, and believe me, there have been quite a few. But this time, for some reason, it felt heavier. Like I could no longer pick myself up off the floor. This time it felt like me against the world.

And in all my adult years, I did something I had never done before. I called my little brother for help. I asked him to come because I wasn’t feeling well. I hoped that if I talked to him, I would feel a little better.

I think it helped. But it didn’t take away the sorrow.

This year was always meant to be shitty. It’s my fault for believing it would be different.

I will tell you this though: being knocked down when you’ve been nothing but good hurts your soul. But when you start to feel like maybe you did something to deserve it, it attacks your mind instead of your soul.

Both are personal hells.

And I don’t know which one I would choose if I had the option. Probably the one that rids me of any guilt, because these days guilt has become my poison.

[From the Diaries, July 2025]

Healing

I’d like to believe I’m healing. With a lot of missteps here and there, I still think I’m on the right path. I’m self-aware. I know my wounds. I know where it hurts, and for the most part I know why it hurts too.

But healing brought me something I wasn’t prepared for: the loss of feeling.

I don’t love people blindly anymore. I don’t hold on to people who don’t treat me the way I deserve. And that’s a big change for me, because I used to be the complete opposite.

I used to be the “love me, choose me” kind of girl. But the truth is, most of the time I was also the girl who stayed even when I wasn’t chosen. I was too understanding. Too forgiving. I gave people the space to play with my feelings without expecting any accountability from them.

I used to feel everything intensely. Now I feel almost nothing.

I’m not in love anymore. I’m not even in love with the idea of being in love. And honestly, I don’t even know what love means to me right now.

This relationship showed me some of the best and worst parts of myself. That’s what relationships do. Even when they don’t work out, they teach you something.

At first it showed me how big my heart is. How unconditional my love can be. How forgiving, nurturing, caring, and trusting I can be.

But eventually there comes a moment when you realize what’s really going on. And when that realization hits, everything shifts. It might feel like it’s too late, but in reality it’s the moment things finally become clear.

And then another part of me shows up. The part I’ve always known existed.

The cold part.

Once I switch off emotionally, I really switch off. To the point where it might look like I was never in love at all.

But I was.

And that’s what makes this strange. Because even though I’ve detached now, a part of me still wants to feel those things again.

I want to be in love again one day, but this time with someone who treats me right. I want to feel excited about someone. I want butterflies again. I want that childish happiness and that slightly crazy infatuation that comes with liking someone deeply.

Because the absence of all of that just feels empty.

[From the Diaries]

I don’t usually talk about how bad it gets.

There’s too much shame around it. The kind of things people don’t really understand. When something doesn’t look normal, people immediately react with discomfort. Icky. Ew. What’s wrong with you?

But for me, it’s just, reality.

Some days I can’t even begin to explain how it feels inside my own mind. I think deep down I know when a low is coming. It’s like something in my gut senses it before the rest of me does. But the timing is never convenient, never when life pauses and says, okay, now you can fall apart. So I ignore it as much as I can.

And because I’m able to keep functioning through it, it gets labeled something neat and clinical: functional depression.

Functional. As if that word somehow makes it manageable.

Because from the outside it looks like I’m choosing when to let it take over. Like it happens on my terms. But the truth is, it only looks that way because I fight it until I can’t anymore.

I’ve been in bed for over twenty-four hours.

Yesterday I forced myself to go for a run because the ugly voices in my head were getting louder. I started feeling heavy in my body, fat in my mind, exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t fix. I thought maybe movement would quiet it. Maybe a workout would shake something loose.

Instead, it made everything worse.

I’m not paralyzed, but I feel mentally handicapped. Like my brain is wrapped in fog and every simple task requires a level of effort I don’t have.

And then there are the relationships around you. The weight of them.

Lucky for me, there’s really only one that matters right now. The one I have with my boyfriend.

But even that feels broken some days. Damaged in ways I don’t even know how to begin repairing.

But then there he was.

When I get into these states, when my mind refuses to cooperate with the world, I stop trying to analyze it. I used to ask why. I used to try to solve it. Now I just let it wash over me and wait for it to pass, hoping that eventually I’ll come back to myself. Hoping the energy returns. The will to exist normally again.

On a TikTok live. With a woman he knows exactly how I feel about.

There had been rumors about them before. The thought of them together already made my stomach turn. And a few weeks ago I had found out that he had texted her from one of his fake accounts. His explanation was that he heard her grandfather had passed away, so he thought of messaging her.

“Helloooo,” he wrote. At 06:04 in the morning.

Does that make sense?

I wanted it to. I really did. I wanted to believe the explanation because believing it would have been easier than accepting what it actually looked like.

But it didn’t make sense.

And my mental state, my inability to function sometimes, is not an excuse for someone to take advantage of that vulnerability.

The person I’m supposed to be with should understand me. Especially the flawed parts. Because they are part of me.

But that wasn’t even half of what I discovered.

At one point I realized he had saved his ex’s number under his sister’s name. Clever. Calculated. And another girl’s number saved under a friend’s name, just so I wouldn’t suspect anything.

The level of intention behind that kind of deception is its own kind of cruelty.

So when I saw the TikTok live, something inside me snapped.

How dare you?

But what shocked me the most was that he was more angry at me for reacting. As if my anger was the problem. As if he couldn’t understand how that would look, how disrespectful it was, especially when we were supposedly trying to rebuild trust.

You say you want to fix things. And then you go and do something like that.

I don’t even have the words for the exhaustion that follows something like this.

I was already mentally drained.

And now, somehow, I’m expected to carry this too.

[From the Diaries]

So deeply uninterested.

Nothing feels exciting. Nothing feels new. There’s nothing I wake up looking forward to.

I feel alive when I look back at certain roads I’ve taken. But I don’t actually want to walk them again. The nostalgia feels electric. The reality probably wouldn’t.

It’s been this way for a while.

I try to put myself out there. I really do. But there’s this strange empathy that holds me back. A softness. A knowing that I’m not fully available. I reason with myself, tell myself it’s okay, tell myself healing isn’t linear. But I just can’t do it yet.

My therapist once asked me something that stayed with me. He asked if, with every relationship that ends, I feel like I lose a part of myself. Like a part of me dies with them.

I had never thought of it like that.

But I told him every breakup leaves me as a different version of myself. Some versions stronger. Some versions smaller. Some empowered. Some feeling less.

The only connection I’ve felt lately was one that promised permanency almost instantly. The minute I responded, it felt solid. And because it felt so easy, I thought it wouldn’t be so hard to feel that way again.

But it is.

Nothing sparks. Nothing shines. Nothing ignites that reckless fire in my soul.

And that’s why I keep looking back.

The most alive I’ve ever felt were the times I was doing something I probably shouldn’t have been doing.

I remember setting a time and waiting. Wondering if they’d show up. Wondering if they’d be early. Or late. Or not come at all.

One of them always showed up on time. The other barely did, and when he did, he was always late.

Maybe they’ll always be my favorite mistakes.

They were similar in the way they made me feel. But one reciprocated it more. It felt mutual. Like we were both burning at the same temperature. There was no escaping it.

June 2019.

A time I sometimes wish I could relive.

From a distance it feels perfect. Cinematic. Glowing. But it wasn’t. It was complicated. It was wrong in ways that should have made me ashamed. But I wasn’t ashamed.

Because I wasn’t demanding anything. I wasn’t pushing for more. I was just existing in it. Going with the flow. Letting it be what it was.

And he made me feel alive again.

That’s the dangerous part.

I’m starting to realize I might have a type. Smart. Corporate. A little reserved. Slightly intense. The quiet kind who surprises you with how deeply they think.

Short. Slim. Controlled.

Age doesn’t matter.

What matters is how they make me feel.

And right now, nothing does.

[From the Diaries]

Truth be told, I don’t even understand it myself. How I was crazy about him, and now it’s just… gone. When it faded, I didn’t notice the exact moment. It must have been gradual. A slow dimming. A quiet exit of feeling.

After most breakups, I usually sit there wondering: did they love me? Did I love them? This time, I don’t question that. I know we both did. He may have loved me too late. I loved him too soon. His fire is burning now, and mine has long turned to ash.

And I know we hear this all the time, but men rarely believe it until it’s too late. Women do not walk away overnight. It happens slowly. The detachment. The grieving. The accepting. And during all those stages, there is still hope. But it is probationary hope. Every move is evaluated. Every word scored against the possibility of a future.

When you fail that stage, whatever is left quietly dies too.

I think we had been drifting for a while. He was foolish to keep taking me for granted. After all, I am a woman who has stayed through worse. He never imagined I would leave one day. Especially not over something he calls trivial.

But it wasn’t trivial.

It was months of accumulated, unresolved weight that finally collapsed. And in that collapse, I saw a version of him that terrified me. Once you see that version, you cannot unsee it. I knew in that moment I would never look at him the same again.

There are no regrets. There is no point in hating something you once enjoyed. Every failed relationship brings me closer to myself. It teaches me to love myself better. To value myself more. I learn so much in the process. Maybe that is what healing looks like.

There is no bitterness. No anger. No sadness.

Just indifference.

At first, I loved him beyond logic. I would bend at every whim. Slowly, piece by piece, he chipped away at that version of me until I came back to my senses.

How can I regret something that kept me on my toes for eleven months? I had fun. It was a rollercoaster. I learned that I can love a man wholeheartedly, without complaint. But I also learned something just as important: I will stop loving entirely if I am not loved back in the same way.

That is my truth.

I did not walk away from love. I am simply returning to myself.

Timing is everything. If you do not love someone while their heart is open to you, you may not realize when it quietly closes. I would not have loved him so quickly had I not been misled. He said “I love you” within a week. I waited a month to say it back. Foolishly, I believed him. Of course he did not love me then.

Now I know better.

It is still tricky, though. I do not consider these later loves the greatest loves. Sometimes they feel like the discounted versions I accept because I missed out on my great one.

But even as I write that, I question it. Who was my great one? There were a few contenders. From where I stand now, none of them were. Some gave me deep love and beautiful memories. Others taught me how to cheer for myself. Each of them shaped me in some way.

I am grateful for that.

Maybe I am not unlucky. Maybe being single in my thirties is not a curse. I had a lot to heal from. I am still healing. That made me difficult for some people to love. I used to call it charm. Maybe it was just growth in progress.

I do not consider myself unlucky. I genuinely believe that what is meant for me will be for me.

And I am letting go of the stigma around dating, around trying, around not settling. Society may look at it one way. But what is a woman supposed to do? Compromise on love? I did not settle before. Why should I now?

Que sera, sera.

Whatever will be, will be.

[From the Diaries]

After almost a year of battling something so uncertain, something that kept knocking me off balance every now and then, I finally detached.

It did not happen dramatically. There was no grand decision. No explosion. It happened so quietly I did not even realize it at first. But somewhere along the way, it must have been intentional. Because there were so many nights I prayed to feel less. I wished I could dull the intensity. I wished his actions did not hurt me the way they did.

And then one day, they didn’t.

His betrayals felt less shocking. His patterns less surprising. Even my anger softened. It was almost as if I was watching it from a distance. Like I was waiting for the feeling to completely dissolve.

And maybe that was the moment it ended.

Like every other time, I swore I was in love when it all began. And like every other time, now that it is over, I question whether it was love at all. But I have to say yes. Because I did things for this man I would never do in my right mind.

So either I was in love.
Or I was out of my mind.

Which, honestly, sometimes feels like the same thing.

Now that it is over, let’s look back. Not too much. Just enough to make sense of it.

For the first few months, he wasn’t really mine. Not fully. He said he was committed. Later, I would find out that wasn’t true. That period felt like hell, but I normalized it. I saw him through rose-tinted glasses and convinced myself that chaos was chemistry.

Sometimes he would disappear for days. No explanation. I would unravel quietly. Sleepless. Anxious. Trying to make sense of something that did not make sense.

In October, I wrote:
“I think I know deep down that I deserve better, but better hasn’t really come along. My heart doesn’t settle on better — it settles on chaos.”

In November, I wrote:
“Fuck that love that doesn’t wipe my tears or hold me when I’m down.”
“The worst men make the prettiest girls feel ugly.”

By the end of November, I was in mental trenches. The lowest I had been in over a decade. And I am ashamed that I allowed someone to take me there.

But by April, something shifted. I had shifted.

In May, I wrote:
“I want to love without surveillance.
I want to breathe without fear.
I want to trust again — even if my hands are still shaking.”

I was still trying. Still hoping.

And then June came, and I wrote:
“There’s a version of love we don’t talk about enough — the kind that lives on after trust has been broken, the kind that stays even when the heart has been bruised more than once.”

And somewhere in between those words, without even realizing it, I had started choosing myself.

I did not walk away from love.
I simply returned to myself.

And I want to end with this.

I am not walking away angry. I am not walking away bitter. I am not even walking away heartbroken in the way I expected.

I am walking away relieved.

Like a weight has lifted from my chest.

Because loving him felt like standing on ground that could collapse at any moment. Like bracing myself constantly for impact.

And now, for the first time in a long time, I am standing on solid ground.

And I am free of that.

[From the Diaries]

I never really talk about how bad it gets. There is so much shame around things people do not understand. Anything outside the norm becomes “icky” or “what’s wrong with you?”

But it is just my reality.

Some days are hard to explain. I can usually feel a low coming before it fully lands. It sits somewhere deep in my body. But the timing is never convenient, so I ignore it. I push through. I function.

That is what they call functional depression. You still show up. You still do the things. It almost feels like it operates on your terms. It takes over quietly, and you learn how to coexist with it.

I stayed in bed for over twenty-four hours. The day before, I forced myself to go for a run because the voices in my head were getting louder. I felt uncomfortable in my own body. Restless. Exhausted. I thought moving would fix it.

It didn’t.

It made everything heavier.

I am not paralyzed, but I feel mentally impaired. Like my brain is moving through fog.

And then there is the weight of relationships.

I only have one that truly matters right now. And even that one feels fractured some days. So damaged that I do not know where to begin repairing it.

When I am in these lows, I no longer try to analyze them. I let them wash over me and wait for them to pass so I can feel like myself again. So I can have the energy and the will to exist properly.

And then something happens.

Something small on the surface. But not small to me.

An interaction. A name. A presence that already carries history and discomfort. Old rumors. Old wounds. Old doubts that were supposedly resolved.

Weeks ago, I had already discovered conversations that should not have existed. Explanations that felt thin. Timing that felt suspicious. I wanted them to make sense. I really did. But they didn’t.

And my mental state is not an excuse for anyone to take advantage of my vulnerability.

I am supposed to be with someone who understands me. All of me. Especially the flawed parts. Because they are part of the package.

Instead, I kept uncovering little deceptions. Names disguised. Details hidden. Small acts that required intention. Not accidents. Intention.

When I saw the most recent thing, I snapped. It felt disrespectful. Especially when we are supposedly rebuilding trust.

What shocked me more was that he was angrier at my reaction than at the behavior itself.

He did not understand how it looked. How it felt. How, in the middle of trying to repair something fragile, actions like that feel like someone stomping on glass.

I do not even have the words anymore.

I was already mentally drained.

And now I am just tired.