Through the Fog

Tag: Depression

  • Fear of Abandonment

    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.

  • Learning to Breathe in the Storm

    I thought the storm had already swallowed me whole. I thought I’d become its wind, its rain, its noise. But somewhere inside the noise there’s still a heartbeat, faint but there. It’s mine.

    The rain hasn’t stopped, but I’m still breathing. My hands are still here. My body is still here. For all the weight pressing down on me, some part of me keeps moving. It isn’t brave. It isn’t heroic. It’s just human — a quiet, stubborn instinct to stay alive even when everything feels pointless.

    People tell me storms pass. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe some storms never leave; maybe they become part of you. But even inside them, there are moments — a break in the clouds, a single breath that doesn’t hurt, a voice on the other end of the phone. Tiny things, but enough to prove that the storm isn’t the only thing that exists.

    I don’t have a map. I don’t have a plan. But right now, in this moment, I’m still here. And that has to mean something. If the storm is part of me, then so is the heartbeat, so is the small voice saying not yet.

    I’m not out of the storm. I don’t know if I ever will be. But for now I’m learning how to breathe inside it. And maybe that’s the first step toward finding a way through.

  • If You Loved Me, Why’d You Leave Me

    Dear you,

    If you loved me, why’d you leave me?

    I know it isn’t fair to ask that of someone who’s gone, but the question sits in my chest like a stone. You didn’t walk out, you didn’t turn your back, you died — but all my heart can feel is that you left. And I’m still here, reaching into empty air.

    I keep replaying our last moments, the sound of your voice, the way you looked at me. I tell myself you didn’t choose this, that death came like a thief and took you without asking. But some nights, in the dark, the anger rises anyway. You loved me. You knew I still needed you. So why am I here alone?

    Everything you touched still hums with your absence. The places we went feel hollow. The air feels heavier. People tell me time will soften it, that grief fades, that love doesn’t end just because someone dies. But they don’t see me lying awake at night, whispering your name into the dark, asking the same question over and over: if you loved me, why’d you leave me?

    Maybe you didn’t have a choice. Maybe your leaving wasn’t a decision but a final surrender your body made without your permission. Maybe love can’t hold someone here when the weight gets too heavy. I tell myself that, and some days it helps. Other days it doesn’t.

    I wish you could see me now. I wish you could tell me what to do with all the pieces you left behind. I wish you could tell me how to live without you. But you can’t. So I’m left with this letter, and the silence after it.

    I still love you. I still feel you. And even though you left, I’m still here.

    Always,

    Me

  • Depression Is Like Drowning

    Depression is like drowning, except you can still breathe. My chest rises and falls, my lungs fill with air, but inside everything feels heavy, waterlogged, sinking. People see me standing, walking, talking. They see me smile. They think I’m fine because I’m not flailing, not gasping for air. They don’t realize drowning doesn’t always look like chaos—it can be quiet. It can be invisible.

    It’s not the violent splashing kind, the kind that makes people rush to the rescue. It’s the silent slipping under, inch by inch. Every day, my head sinks a little lower beneath the surface, and the world grows muffled. Sounds dull. Colors fade. Even my own thoughts feel blurred, like they’re trapped underwater with me.

    I want to scream, but the sound dies before it leaves my throat. I want to reach out, but my arms are too heavy. And so I smile, nod, laugh when I’m supposed to. I carry on. Because if I let the mask slip, if I let people see the water rising around me, I’m not sure they’d understand. I’m not sure they’d believe me.

    What no one tells you about drowning is how exhausting it is. Every second is survival—treading water, pretending it’s effortless, hiding the fatigue. My arms ache. My chest burns. My mind whispers that it would be easier to stop fighting, to just let myself sink. And the truth is, sometimes that thought feels like relief.

    That’s the cruelty of it. Depression doesn’t take away my breath—it lets me breathe, but makes the air feel useless. It doesn’t stop my heart—it just strips the meaning out of every beat. I’m alive, but it doesn’t feel like living. It feels like waiting. Waiting for someone to notice. Waiting for the current to change. Waiting for the day when I either finally reach the shore or stop fighting altogether.

    And some nights, I can feel it—my body getting heavier, the pull of the water stronger, my will to fight fading. I don’t just think about sinking anymore. I start to wonder what it would feel like to stop treading, to let the silence take me under completely.

    That’s the darkest truth of drowning in depression: you don’t always go under screaming. Sometimes you just… go under.

  • Why Is Sobriety a Big Fucking Deal, and Why Do I Not Care to Have It?

    People talk about sobriety like it’s the prize at the end of some brutal marathon. You crawl through addiction, you drag yourself through the mud, and if you’re lucky enough to survive, you get to hold up sobriety like a trophy. And I get it. For families, for doctors, for the people who almost lost you, it is a big fucking deal. It means they don’t have to bury you. It means you live to see another day.

    But living and wanting to live are two different things.

    Sobriety is supposed to give you your life back. What no one tells you is that sometimes the life you get back isn’t the one you want. You’re suddenly left without the rituals that made the hard days bearable. No glass of whiskey to unwind. No chemical escape hatch when the walls close in. Just you — sober, raw, restless. And if you didn’t like yourself much to begin with, staring that person in the face every day without a buffer feels like punishment, not freedom.

    That’s the cruel irony: sobriety is celebrated because it saves lives, but it doesn’t always feel like living. It feels like existing. Like standing still in a world that keeps moving. Like being handed back a version of yourself that’s patched together but missing all the edges you thought made you interesting.

    And maybe that’s what pisses me off the most. People expect you to be grateful. To glow with this new appreciation for mornings and coffee and “clarity.” But sometimes sobriety feels like sitting in a quiet room while everyone else is at the party. Sometimes it feels like being alive when you don’t know what to do with the days you’ve been given.

    So why is sobriety a big fucking deal? Because it saves lives, and that matters. Why do I not care to have it? Because I wanted more than just survival. I wanted to feel alive, even if it burned me.

  • Lost

    Lost

    I am lost.

    Not in the way of wrong turns or broken maps,

    but in the way of forgetting who I am.

    The roads all blur together.

    The signs point everywhere and nowhere.

    I keep walking, but every step

    feels like it carries me further from myself.

    People talk about finding direction,

    as if there is always a compass inside us,

    steady and true.

    But mine spins wildly,

    tugged by shadows,

    pulled by silence,

    never pointing home.

    Being lost is not always loud.

    Sometimes it’s just the stillness,

    the quiet ache of realizing

    you don’t recognize the person in the mirror,

    that even your own reflection

    feels like a stranger.

    And yet—

    to be lost means you are still moving.

    It means there is still a path,

    even if it hides itself for now.

    It means you have not given up,

    even when every part of you wants to.

    Lost is not the end.

    It is only the middle.

  • What Does It All Mean?

    I ask it in the silence,

    in the dark hours when the world feels too heavy,

    too sharp,

    too empty.

    What does it all mean?

    The tears, the laughter,

    the fleeting joys,

    the losses that carve holes so deep

    you wonder if you’ll ever fill them again.

    Is there a reason for the war inside me?

    For the nights I drowned my own voice?

    For the moments I almost gave up,

    but didn’t?

    Maybe meaning isn’t a grand design

    etched in stone above us.

    Maybe it’s found in smaller things —

    the hand that steadies you,

    the breath you didn’t think you’d take,

    the sunrise that still arrives

    even when you don’t feel ready for it.

    What does it all mean?

    I don’t know.

    But maybe it means this:

    that even in the fog,

    we keep moving,

    we keep searching,

    we keep choosing to stay.

    And maybe the meaning is not something we find,

    but something we become.

  • The Weight of Belonging

    I don’t know how to live in this world.

    It moves too fast,

    asks for masks I don’t know how to wear,

    demands a kind of certainty

    I’ve never been able to hold.

    I watch people move through it

    like dancers who know the steps,

    while I stumble at the edges,

    always a beat behind,

    always out of rhythm.

    The rules confuse me.

    The noise overwhelms me.

    And sometimes I wonder

    if I was meant for another place,

    another time,

    a gentler existence where my heart

    would not feel so out of place.

    But I am here.

    And even in the not-knowing,

    I am learning small things:

    how to breathe when the weight presses down,

    how to stand still when the ground shakes,

    how to let softness survive in a world

    that worships hardness.

    Maybe I will never know how to live in this world

    the way others do.

    Maybe my way will always look different,

    slower, quieter, stranger.

    But maybe that is its own kind of life.

    Maybe not knowing is still living.

    Maybe it is enough to stay,

    to search,

    to keep reaching for light

    in a world that feels too dark.

  • The Quiet Survival

    No one ever talks about the quiet survival.

    The kind where you wake up,

    not because you want to,

    but because your body betrays you

    with another breath.

    No one speaks of the war it takes

    just to stand,

    to sit,

    to pretend you are alive

    when inside you are unraveling thread by thread.

    There are no parades

    for the nights you do not end,

    for the days you drag yourself through the motions,

    your smile cracked porcelain,

    your voice rehearsed.

    The world only praises the dramatic victories,

    the visible resurrections.

    But no one claps for the silent battle —

    the choice not to pick up the bottle,

    not to open the drawer,

    not to vanish.

    Quiet survival leaves no scars anyone can see.

    It leaves you hollow-eyed,

    aching,

    wondering if endurance is a gift

    or just another kind of punishment.

    Still, it happens.

    Night after night.

    Day after day.

    An uncelebrated persistence.

    And maybe that is what makes it so brutal:

    that the hardest survival

    is the kind no one ever sees.

  • The Darkness

    The darkness is not just the absence of light.

    It is weight.

    It is silence with teeth.

    It is the place where time loses its shape

    and thoughts echo too loudly.

    I have known its language.

    The way it whispers,

    convincing me I am alone,

    convincing me I am unworthy,

    convincing me there is no way forward.

    But the darkness is not only destruction.

    It is also a mirror.

    In its depths, I see the parts of myself

    I tried to bury,

    the shadows I tried to outrun.

    It forces me to face what daylight lets me hide.

    Some nights, it feels endless.

    Other nights, I catch the faintest glow —

    a reminder that even the smallest flame

    can hold its ground

    against all that emptiness.

    The darkness teaches me this:

    it is not here to kill me,

    but to show me how badly I want to live.