Living in Agony

I am living in my agony,

not visiting it,

not passing through on the way to something better—

I’ve unpacked here.

Learned the hours.

Memorized the sound of my own breathing

when the night stretches too wide.

Pain isn’t dramatic anymore.

It doesn’t shout.

It hums.

Low and constant,

like a refrigerator in the dark—

easy to ignore until the power goes out

and you realize how loud it always was.

I wake up already tired,

already negotiating with myself

about how much truth I can afford today.

Some days I give nothing.

Some days I bleed quietly into routine

and call it productivity.

I carry my agony politely.

I hold doors.

I smile.

I ask other people how they’re doing

and mean it—

because focusing on their lives

keeps me from inventorying my own wreckage.

But it’s there.

In the pauses.

In the way I flinch at kindness

like it might ask something of me later.

In how I brace myself

even when nothing is coming.

Living in my agony means

learning the weight of unshed tears,

how they press behind the eyes,

how they settle in the chest

like a language I never learned to speak aloud.

It means knowing that healing isn’t linear—

it’s circular.

You come back to the same wounds

wearing different names,

hoping this time they recognize you

as someone who survived.

I don’t romanticize this.

There is nothing beautiful about endurance

when it costs you pieces you can’t replace.

There is nothing noble

about being strong so long

you forget what rest feels like.

And still—

I keep going.

Not because I’m brave.

Not because I believe everything will work out.

But because something stubborn in me

refuses to let the pain have the last word.

Living in my agony

doesn’t mean I’ve given up.

It means I’m honest about where I am.

It means I’m still here,

even when here hurts,

even when the only victory

is making it to the end of the day

without disappearing.

This is not a cry for saving.

It’s a statement of fact.

A line drawn in the dirt

that says:

this is where I stand,

this is what I carry,

and despite it all—

I am still breathing.