🧎🏻‍♂️

People see the smile.

The job.

The conversations.

A life that looks completely normal.

What they never see is the quiet exhaustion slowly hollowing you out from the inside.

The frightening part isn’t that a car can lose control.

It’s that, for a split second, your mind can convince you that you’re the one behind the wheel when you aren’t.

And once that happens, you start questioning everything.

Maybe the scariest thing isn’t losing control.

Maybe it’s waking up one day and realizing you’re slowly losing trust in your own mind.

I function, I show up, I do what needs to be done—but inside, it’s noisy in a way I can’t always explain.

I’ve been carrying more than I talk about.

Not dramatic, not loud—just quiet weight that builds over time.

Sleep doesn’t always reset me, and memory doesn’t always stay with me the way I want it to. Small things slip. Names, tasks, moments. And sometimes even my own sense of where I am feels a little far away.

But I’m still here. Still trying. Still moving forward in my own way.

There are days I feel disconnected from people, even when they’re right in front of me. Not because I don’t care, but because my mind is already stretched thin from working in silence for so long.

And still, I don’t give up on myself.

I’m learning that mental health isn’t about being “fine” all the time. It’s about noticing when you’re not, and not pretending it isn’t real. It’s about accepting that I’m human—affected by years, routines, stress, and things I haven’t fully processed yet.

I don’t always feel strong.

But I keep showing up anyway.

And maybe that counts as something.

We no longer greet the same sunrise or watch the same moon together.

Yet somehow, we’re still connected—through the songs we both love. 🎵

I was standing outside looking at his house, thinking, “Wow… this is the life.”

Then he walked by, and I asked him, “How’s your wife?”

He looked at me and quietly said, “She passed away.”

For a second everything felt different.

He was standing there in front of his dream house, but the person he built that dream with was gone.

And in that moment I realized — a house, money, nature, success… none of it feels complete without the person you love beside you.

Life suddenly felt very small and very deep at the same time.

Feels like yesterday I was just a boy with too many thoughts

and nowhere to place them except on paper.

Years passed.

People changed.

Dreams broke and rebuilt themselves.

But writing stayed.

It held my anger, my love, my loneliness,

and every version of me I was too scared to show the world.

31 feels strange —

not because I’m getting older,

but because the words I once wrote to survive

are now the same words that define me.

Still here.

Still writing.

Still becoming someone my younger self would quietly be proud of.

with rain in the wind

and silence between the trees.

Those are the nights

that remind me of you the most.

Every drop resting on a leaf

feels like your fingertips

touching a world you already left behind.

I try to move on,

but memories return like weather —

unexpected, gentle, and impossible to stop.”

Ten years of memories, lessons, silence, hope, distance, mistakes, and moments that shaped me more than I understood at the time.

I still remember how we met, and how naturally you became part of my life. You taught me things no school or book ever could. You showed me patience, strength, love, pain, and the kind of connection that changes a person forever. Many of my hopes and dreams once felt real because of you. For a time, life looked brighter simply because you were in it.

But somewhere along the way, anger took over what understanding should have protected. Pride replaced softness. Misunderstandings replaced truth. What could have been a beautiful direction slowly turned into confusion. We both carried pain, and pain has a way of destroying roads people once wanted to walk together.

You brought smiles to my face during days no one else understood. You gave me reasons to believe in things I had stopped believing in. And now, after everything, I find myself asking who I even am. Maybe that is what happens when someone becomes such a deep part of your story—you lose pieces of yourself while trying to hold onto them.

Every day I kept pretending for my family, for the world, for everyone who only sees the outside. Smiling when I was tired. Speaking when I was empty. Acting normal when my mind was somewhere else. We both went through unfair things life placed in front of us. Some battles were never ours, yet we still had to fight them.

Maybe the hardest truth is this: I did not truly understand you when I had the chance. Maybe I understood too late. Maybe I only understood through losing.

I don’t want dreams or wishes anymore if they were only tied to having you. I don’t want anything built from longing, regret, or imagination. I am not writing this for fame, sympathy, money, or attention. I am writing because truth deserves one final voice.

What I felt for you was real in the purest way I knew. No greed. No use. No transaction. Just love in the only form I knew how to give it.

But now I am choosing to stop carrying what keeps breaking me. I am choosing to stop repeating this cycle. I am choosing silence where pain kept asking for more words.

But losing my dreams for you was the kind of loss that never returns.

6 months of pretending I’m fine.

Average sleep: 3 hours 12 minutes.

Still showed up, still worked, still smiled.

Some battles leave no bruises.

the kind that doesn’t let you sleep,

the kind that smiles in public

and breaks you in private.

I’ve been fighting wars

with no audience,

bleeding in silence

where no one thinks to look.

But out there—

they don’t ask how you’re holding up,

they ask what you’re holding.

They don’t measure your pain,

they measure your pocket.

And it’s funny…

how a full wallet can hide

an empty chest.

I could be falling apart inside,

piece by piece,

but as long as the numbers look right,

no one questions the cracks.

No one knows the war within me,

they just check if I can pay for peace.

because I was here for you—

for a hundred days straight.

I stayed with hope in my hands,

thinking maybe this meant something…

maybe we meant something.

But while I was holding on,

you were already letting go.

And in the end,

you didn’t fight,

you didn’t stay—

you just walked away.