Through the Fog

Tag: emotional exhaustion

  • Drawing Straws

    I keep drawing straws—

    each one shorter than the last,

    like fate is shaving inches

    off my hope

    with careful hands.

    I tell myself it’s random.

    Chance.

    Bad timing.

    A season that just won’t turn.

    But the pile at my feet

    says otherwise.

    Every time I reach in,

    I already know

    what my fingers will find—

    the splintered end,

    the one that means

    not this time,

    not for you,

    try again with less to stand on.

    I’ve learned to smile

    before anyone can pity me.

    Learned to nod

    like I expected it.

    Like disappointment

    and I have a private agreement

    to meet here.

    It’s strange

    how a person can grow smaller

    without anyone noticing—

    how hope can shrink

    quietly,

    like a wick burning low

    in a room no one enters anymore.

    Still, I keep reaching.

    Because somewhere inside me

    there’s a stubborn pulse

    that refuses to believe

    this is the only ending available.

    Maybe one day

    I’ll draw a long one—

    smooth, untouched,

    ridiculous in its generosity.

    Or maybe

    the miracle won’t be the straw at all.

    Maybe it will be the moment

    I stop measuring my worth

    by what I pull from a handful

    of borrowed luck.

    Maybe it will be

    when I finally let go of the cup,

    open my palm,

    and decide

    I was never meant

    to gamble

    for a life

    that was already mine.

  • Rock Bottom

    I hate rock bottom,

    but I’m good at digging holes—

    hands blistered from familiar work,

    knowing exactly where the ground gives way.

    I tell myself I’m searching for answers,

    for something buried worth finding,

    but most days I’m just rehearsing the fall,

    proving I still know how to disappear.

    Rock bottom scares me

    because it asks me to stop digging,

    to stand still with the damage,

    to look at what’s left

    instead of what I can destroy next.

    Digging feels like control.

    Like movement.

    Like I’m doing something

    instead of admitting I’m tired.

    But every hole looks the same

    after a while—

    dark, quiet, convincing.

    I don’t fall because I don’t know better.

    I fall because climbing feels

    like hope,

    and hope feels dangerous

    when you’ve been let down before.

    Still—

    even with dirt under my nails,

    even with gravity winning again—

    some part of me keeps looking up,

    measuring the distance,

    wondering what it would take

    to stop digging

    and start building

    instead.

  • 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.

  • What Have I Become

    What have I become, my sweetest friend,

    when even your silence sounds like judgment?

    When you look at me

    like I’m something you remember

    but don’t recognize anymore.

    I’m made of aftermath now

    of things that didn’t kill me

    but stayed anyway.

    I learned how to survive by shrinking,

    by numbing the sharp edges

    until nothing cut

    and nothing healed.

    I speak in half-truths.

    I smile like it’s a habit I can’t break.

    I carry my worst thoughts

    like contraband

    hidden, heavy, always with me.

    I wasn’t born this hollow.

    I was worn down.

    Sandpapered by time,

    by love that took more than it gave,

    by nights that taught me

    how easy it is to disappear

    without going anywhere.

    If you’re still calling me friend,

    don’t ask me to be better.

    Don’t ask me to go back.

    That person didn’t survive this.

    This is what’s left

    quieter, darker,

    harder to love,

    still breathing

    like that’s supposed to mean something.