Not because anyone told me outright, but because life showed me in small, cruel ways — the way people left without warning, the way silence always followed honesty, the way I kept giving pieces of myself and watching them be forgotten.
I thought I was somebody nobody could love.
So I learned to disappear before anyone could confirm it.
I became the friend who laughed too loud, the lover who didn’t ask for much, the person who said “I’m fine” even when I was anything but. I built walls and called them boundaries. I called loneliness “strength.”
The truth is, I didn’t want to be loved — not really. I wanted to be seen and still chosen. I wanted someone to stay after finding out who I really was beneath the pretending. But when you spend enough time convincing yourself you’re unworthy, love starts to feel like a threat.
I thought I was somebody nobody could love.
But maybe it wasn’t love that was missing — maybe it was me.
Maybe I left myself long before anyone else did.
And now, slowly, painfully, I’m learning to return.
One moment I’m okay — maybe even a little happy — and the next, it’s like the air changes. The light fades. The room feels colder, emptier. The silence gets loud again.
I can be laughing, talking, even surrounded by people, and still feel that slow pull inward — that sudden drop where everything good starts to feel like a lie. It’s not dramatic; it’s quiet. A quiet collapse inside my chest that no one else can see.
I’ve tried to understand it. I’ve blamed hormones, exhaustion, trauma, the ghosts of everything I’ve tried to bury. Maybe it’s all of those things. Or maybe it’s just the echo of loneliness that never really leaves — it just waits for the noise to die down so it can crawl back in.
Depression doesn’t knock. It doesn’t announce itself. It just… arrives.
It takes your good day and turns it inside out until you’re left wondering if the good part ever happened at all.
And I hate how convincing it is — how real the emptiness feels when it returns. It tells me that I’m too much and not enough all at once. That everyone I love is just pretending. That I’m better off staying quiet because no one really wants to hear the truth anyway.
But I’ve lived enough days like this to know it passes. Maybe not quickly, maybe not cleanly, but it does. The good doesn’t disappear — it just gets harder to see through the fog.
So I breathe.
I remind myself that feeling alone isn’t the same as being alone.
That healing doesn’t mean I’ll never fall back into the dark — it just means I know the way out now.
How can I go from having a good day to feeling so alone?
Because healing isn’t linear. Because memory is heavy.
Because sometimes the heart still mourns the things the mind has moved on from.
And that’s okay.
The sun still rises, even when I can’t feel its warmth.
I just want someone to save me. Not fix me. Not offer pep talks or promises. Just drag me out of this black water before I go under for good.
Most days I feel like I’m already halfway gone. Everyone thinks I’m functioning, but it’s all masks. I smile, I nod, I pretend I’m okay while something inside me keeps whispering, let go. I keep waiting for somebody to see through it, to reach in before it’s too late, but no one ever does.
I don’t want a hero. I don’t want someone to tell me I’m strong. I want somebody who won’t run when I’m ugly, when I’m drunk, when I’m shaking, when I’m no longer easy to love. Someone who doesn’t leave when I mess up. Someone who proves I’m still worth fighting for even when I’m not sure I am.
I’ve been surviving for so long it feels like a reflex. Walls instead of warmth. Silence instead of asking. And the more I do it, the more I start to believe the lie that maybe I’m not supposed to be saved. Maybe this is it — me, drowning quietly while the world keeps moving.
Some nights I imagine just stopping. No more fighting, no more treading, just sinking until the noise fades. It scares me how much relief that thought brings. It scares me that I don’t even fight it anymore.
I just want someone to save me, even if only for a moment, even if only to show me I’m not completely lost yet. Because I don’t know how many more nights like this I can stand.
Some days I feel like my entire life has been one long rehearsal for people leaving me. It’s a script I know by heart—the waiting, the silence, the glance that lingers too long, the tone that shifts, the distance that grows. I see it before it even happens, and my chest tightens as though I’m already alone.
The fear of abandonment is not just fear—it’s a shadow that sits inside me, whispering reminders of every goodbye I never asked for, every rejection that cut too deep. It tells me I am replaceable. Forgettable. That if I don’t hold on tight enough, people will vanish like smoke, and I’ll be left clutching the air where they used to be.
I crave closeness but it terrifies me at the same time. I want to be seen, but I’m afraid of what happens once I am. I want to trust, but trust feels like handing someone the keys to burn me down. So I hover in this space between reaching out and pulling away, torn between the desperate need to be chosen and the unbearable fear that I never will be.
When someone leaves—even if it’s not forever—it feels like proof that the voice inside was right. Proof that I am not worth staying for. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a missed call, or someone needing space—it all feels like abandonment to me. And in those moments, I can’t separate the present from the past. I’m back in every empty room, every unanswered plea, every door that closed too soon.
Maybe this fear will always follow me. Maybe it’s stitched into who I am. But part of me wonders if it’s possible to learn how to carry it differently—to not let it consume me every time the threat of distance appears. For now, I just write. Because writing doesn’t leave me.
Through the Fog 