NOKOMIS

Because the truth is I am completely at the end of my rope. Every single day is just a brutal uphill battle and it doesn't even feel like I'm treading water anymore, I am just straight up drowning. I am so sick and tired of the constant, suffocating self-loathing. It makes me feel like a total freak, completely cut off from everyone because my mind won't stop flooding me with terrible thoughts. I genuinely believe there is something wrong with me. Like seriously, fundamentally wrong with me. Something wicked and deeply disturbed that keeps me trapped in this loop. Underneath all the exhaustion is this deep sadness that has just been building and building and building forever, packing down into something way too heavy to carry.

And it bleeds into everything, even the stuff I’ve worked the hardest on. I feel like a total failure at my job. I look at my career and it’s nowhere near where I wanted or expected it to be by now. I have poured so much energy, time, and exhausting effort into trying to move forward, but none of it mattered. I still feel completely stuck, useless, and inadequate. Like all that hard work was for nothing.

I used to try to lose myself in writing and roleplay, but I can’t even hide behind that anymore. The distraction is broken, the escape is gone, and none of it actually fixes what's wrong with me underneath.

It is a uniquely suffocating grief, knowing that my parents died without ever knowing me, and worse, knowing they didn’t want to. They looked at the truth of who I am and chose disgust, chose to see a monster instead of their child. Now there is no chance for an apology, no hope for them to finally see the light in my dark eyes, just the realization that I was never loved for being me. I was only tolerated until I dared to exist as myself. I am left here in this empty space, an orphan twice over: once by the cruelty of their life, and again by the silence of their death.

All those edits we made. All the long-winded replies tucked into Discord DMs. It’s all just... gone. It’s like a library burned down and I’m the only one who remembers the titles of the books.

I’m so stupidly sentimental. I’m terrified that without those digital crumbs, my brain is going to start smoothing over the edges of what we had. I’m scared I won’t remember the specific way you’d describe the cold, or how my character’s heart would skip when yours finally showed up.

I was driving down a backroad today, the one with the cracked pavement and the trees that lean in too close.

I had to pull over because I couldn't see through the tears. I just sat there in the silence, listening to the engine tick, realizing that I’m holding onto a ghost that doesn't even have a face anymore. It’s just an empty space where a whole world used to be. My chest just feels heavy and hollow at the same time. It’s a special kind of grief, losing a universe that only two people ever knew existed, and now I’m the only one left holding the map to a place that’s been deleted.

I kept driving until the gas light started blinking, a rhythmic tapping that felt like a countdown. I pulled into this grimy station out in the middle of nowhere, the kind with the flickering fluorescent lights and the smell of stale coffee and oil. My head was still spinning from everything I lost on that phone, all those words that don't exist in the physical world anymore.

I was looking through a wall of junk near the register, just mindless shuffling through keychains and lighters, when I saw it. I didn't even look at the price. I just shoved crumpled bills at the clerk and walked out, clutching that cold bit of metal so hard it left a dent in my skin.

It’s so silly. My character wasn't a hero like yours, but we spent so many nights talking about what it meant to carry the weight of the world. Seeing that logo, even on a piece of gas station junk, felt like a punch to the gut. It felt like a sign, or maybe just a cruel joke from the universe to remind me of the girl who used to understand every hidden meaning I tucked into a paragraph.

I’m so deeply sentimental it's a disease. I know I’m pathetic for buying a superhero trinket at sunset on a backroad just because it reminds me of a ship that sank over a year ago.

But as I wrapped the cheap tin around my rearview mirror, I realized I’m just terrified of the day I don’t feel this ache anymore. I’m holding on to this because it’s the only thing I have left that hasn't been deleted. I’m sitting here in the dark, crying over a set of dog tags, wondering if you ever see things that make you stop and think of me, too.