𝑆𝑦𝑒𝑑𝑎 𝑍𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑏

The parasite in my head won't let me sleep. The ache in my stomach won't let me eat. The fear won't let me speak. The memories won't let me forget. The guilt won't let me breathe. The anxiety won't let me think. The loneliness won't let me ask for help. The silence won't let me heal. The shame won't let me forgive myself. The overthinking won't let me rest. And somehow, I'm still here.

Oh Mother, there is a grave inside me, a place where I buried the words I couldn't say, the tears I couldn't cry, and the parts of myself that slowly faded away. There are memories I avoid, feelings I hide, and pain I never learned how to explain. I keep so much inside that even I have forgotten how to talk about it.

I treat myself with a kind of cruelty I would never show to anyone else. I blame myself for things I couldn't change, punish myself for mistakes I've made, and convince myself that I deserve every ounce of pain. I do that well enough on my own. I carry guilt that never seems to fade. No one has been as unforgiving, as relentless, or as merciless to me as I have been to myself.

When I tell people I'm depressed or struggling, they tell me to get out more, stay positive, and keep busy. What they don't realize is that when I'm in that place, even the smallest things feel impossible because I don't have the energy or motivation, and it's hard to see the point in trying. I just can't see a way forward. Everything feels heavy. And explaining this over and over is exhausting.

The way you speak to your child becomes their inner voice; if you are cruel to them, they will spend a lifetime being cruel to themselves.

Growing up with my feelings constantly dismissed left me deeply unsure of myself, making it incredibly hard to express what I'm going through in a healthy way. Having my reality denied was profoundly traumatic, shaking the very foundation of who I am and eroding my self-esteem. It has left me battling a heavy mixture of resentment, regret, humiliation, and a deep-seated belief that I just don't matter.

i lie awake at night, sobbing so violently it feels like my chest might give out, drowning in a loneliness i fashioned with my own hands, a loneliness i invited by pushing everyone away. do i even have the right to grieve the pain i caused myself?

stop telling people they aren't trying. seriously, stop. it's infuriating how people pass judgment on someone else's life without knowing what they're carrying. how the hell would you know what they've been through or what it took just to make it through the day? you don't get to minimize someone's pain or decide their worth. and it is honestly so arrogant to think you have the right to belittle someone's struggle simply because it doesn't look the way you expect.

i'm okay, and i'm not. i feel everything, and then i feel nothing at all. i am overwhelmed by my own emotions one moment and completely numb the next. i want to burn everything down just to interrupt the silence inside me, yet all i really want is a little peace. i want everything, and i want nothing, and i am exhausted by both. my mind keeps pulling me in opposite directions. i do not know how to exist without feeling like i am drowning inside myself.

being afraid of your parents is not normal. hiding ordinary things because you are terrified of someone's reaction is not normal. being cursed at, humiliated, threatened, hit, or punished until you live in constant fear is not discipline. it is not love. it is not "for your own good." no child is responsible for managing an adult's anger. every child deserves a home where they can breathe without fear, make mistakes without being broken, and know that love does not arrive with raised voices or closed fists.

I want to rest my head on my mom's shoulder and just crumble, like a child who doesn't have to be brave anymore. I want to tell her I'm scared, that I'm tired, that I don't know how to keep holding myself together. But we never do. Neither of us knows how to cross the silence between us. We fumble past each other in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the silence, both of us carrying pieces of our broken hearts, not knowing how to put them back together for each other. We never learned how to heal each other's wounds.

What keeps you awake at night? The things I never say out loud. The people I miss, the things I never said, every mistake I wish I could take back, and every "what if" that refuses to leave me alone. It's the life I imagined, the life I'm actually living, and the life I don't know how to build. It's wondering if I wasted another day, if anything will ever really change, and the quiet fear that tomorrow will feel exactly like today.

What do you miss about your childhood? Nothing. There are no soft memories I return to, no gentle moments that make me smile when I look back. There is only the sense of having moved through those years rather than lived them. It feels less like something I experienced and more like something I endured. I do not feel nostalgia. I feel absence, a quiet hollow space shaped by what should have been there but never was.

I died trying, trying to become someone I could be proud of, trying to carry burdens that were never meant for one person, trying to love others even when I didn’t always know how to love myself, and trying to believe that tomorrow might feel different. There were days when simply getting out of bed felt like climbing out of the ocean with stones tied to my ankles. And still, I tried.

I am the child who kept waiting for things to get better, and the adult who still doesn't know how to stop waiting. I am made of things I never got to say, love I never learned how to ask for, and wounds that never had the chance to heal. I am the silence after a question no one asks, the tears that never make it past my eyes, and the words that stay trapped in my throat. I am every sleepless night that no one knew about, every piece of myself I buried.

Do you self sabotage? More often than I would like to admit. I leave before I can be left. I convince myself not to try because failure feels easier when I choose it first. I push away the people who care about me, then wonder why I feel so alone. I talk myself out of opportunities because the voice in my head is louder than the one telling me to believe in myself. Somewhere along the way, protecting myself became indistinguishable from holding myself back. The hardest part is knowing that the person standing between me and the life I want is so often me.

What makes you happy? Hearing my mother laugh. My mother's voice when it is gentle. Seeing my family together. The feeling of coming home after a difficult day. Someone remembering the little things I mentioned once. Someone sitting beside me without asking me to explain myself. Laughing so hard I forget what was hurting. Music that says everything I cannot. Finishing a book that made me feel understood.