There are days when the weight settles in like an unwelcome visitor, heavy and suffocating. It doesn’t ask permission; it just arrives—draping itself over everything, whispering thoughts that claw and bite. I feel it creeping in, that familiar ache to pull away, to shut out the world, to silence the noise by throwing everything away...including me.
It’s like drowning in slow motion, the world fading further and further out of reach. But here, in this space—this tiny, fragile bubble—I’m holding on. Holding space for the sadness, for the ache, for the silence that swells around me. It’s heavy, and it’s hard, but I’m still here. I’m still breathing. And that has to mean something.
Sometimes, I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to explain it, justify it, or even try to understand it. I just want someone to hold the space with me, to sit in the dark without trying to force the light. To let me feel it—every jagged edge and sharp corner—until it softens on its own. I want that...I want it so bad, but I don’t know how to ask for it. I keep feeling like I need to keep it together, like showing the cracks would mean everything would shatter. So, I stay quiet. I stay hidden...and only come back when everything is better.
Maybe this is what it means to be strong—not in the fighting, but in the staying. Not in the conquering, but in the holding on, even when every part of me wants to let go.
I don’t even know what’s wrong. Just this feeling…sadness. I don’t want to speak about it—I never do. I pull away, shut down...nothing in, nothing out. They can’t see me like this…no one can…no one wants to anyway. So I shut down, switch off…because they only know me as the happy one, the over-the-top, laughing, optimistic girl who be6lieves unicorns exist and really poop glitter rainbows.
But I can’t…it’s too much, but I try. "Smile…c’mon just one SMILE, DAMMIT…crack a joke, reference a meme. FANTASTIC, now do it again, but this time as if you mean it."
So I do. I just pretend like I’m not suffocating…like I’m not crumbling beneath the weight of it all. I keep going…hoping in a few days it will be gone. And when it is, I sweep it under the already heaped rug, out of sight, out of mind—until it finds its way back again, as it always does.