Through the Fog

Tag: Mental Health

  • Echo of Loneliness

    Photo Credit: Fredrick Löwer

    It surprises me how quickly the shift happens.

    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.

  • Fragile

    Recovery isn’t the clean, steady climb people imagine it to be.

    It’s not a straight line, and it’s not always inspiring.

    Sometimes it’s messy and painful — full of steps backward, relapses of thought, and nights spent questioning whether I’m really getting better or just getting used to the ache.

    I’m fragile in recovery.

    I wake up some days full of hope, and by nightfall, I’m drowning in doubt again. The smallest thing — a memory, a song, a smell — can pull me back into the dark, and I hate how easily I break. But breaking is part of it. Healing doesn’t mean the cracks disappear; it means learning how to live with them.

    People think recovery is about strength, but I’ve learned it’s mostly about endurance — about showing up when your hands are still shaking. About forgiving yourself when you fall apart again, even after promising you wouldn’t.

    There’s no finish line here.

    No moment where I suddenly become whole again.

    There’s just me — fragile, trembling, trying.

    And maybe that’s enough.

    Maybe being fragile in recovery means I’m still fighting,

    still choosing life,

    even when the weight of it threatens to break me.

  • A Cold Wind’s Been Blowing Again

    A cold wind’s been blowing again.

    Not the kind that rattles the windows,

    but the kind that settles inside your bones—

    quiet, heavy, and impossible to shake.

    It shows up without warning.

    You’re fine one moment,

    and then the air shifts.

    You can feel it—the change,

    the ache, the way the past starts whispering again.

    It’s strange how memory carries its own weather.

    Lately, it’s been winter where my heart lives.

    Old ghosts drift through the halls,

    and everything feels a little too still,

    a little too empty.

    I try to convince myself it’s just the season,

    but I know better.

    Some storms come back

    just to remind you they never really left.

    I’ve learned to stop fighting the wind.

    To let it move through me,

    to let it tear down what’s brittle

    and leave behind only what’s strong enough to stay.

    Maybe that’s what healing really is—

    not the absence of the storm,

    but the quiet acceptance

    that it will always return from time to time.

    And when it does,

    I’ll wrap my arms around myself,

    take a deep breath,

    and whisper into the cold air—

    You can’t take what I’ve already learned to live without.

  • The Weight of Loving The Broken

    You’ll never truly know

    how broken someone is

    until you try to love them—

    until your hands meet the cracks

    they’ve spent years hiding,

    until your kindness echoes

    in rooms where only silence has lived.

    They’ll flinch from gentle words

    as if softness were a threat.

    They’ll test your patience

    like a child lost in a storm,

    unsure if safety can exist without pain.

    And if you stay long enough,

    you’ll learn that love

    isn’t always light.

    Sometimes it’s holding someone

    while their darkness spills out,

    and realizing

    you can’t fix them—

    only love them through the breaking.

  • And All I Loved, I Loved Alone

    Photo Credit: Parker Sturdivant

    There’s a strange kind of beauty in loneliness —

    not the cinematic kind where rain falls softly against the window and someone reaches for your hand,

    but the kind that aches in silence,

    where the only heartbeat you hear is your own.

    Maybe that’s always been me.

    The quiet observer. The one who feels everything too deeply and still says nothing.

    I used to think love would fix that —

    that it would fill the hollow space inside me where all the echoes live.

    But love never stayed long enough to understand the language of my silence.

    I’ve loved people, moments, dreams that dissolved before I could hold them.

    I’ve watched laughter fade into distance, and promises into static.

    They said I was guarded, hard to read, maybe even cold.

    But they never saw how fiercely I felt everything —

    how my heart broke in private,

    how I carried every loss like it still had a pulse.

    “And all I loved, I loved alone.”

    Poe said that.

    And maybe he understood what it means to love like that —

    to pour yourself into people who never notice the depth of it,

    to find beauty in the ache of solitude.

    Because love, when you’ve been hurt enough, becomes something quieter.

    It’s not fireworks — it’s endurance.

    It’s learning to sit in the dark and still care.

    To keep loving even when no one stays.

    To keep believing that maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

    Sometimes, I think being alone doesn’t mean you’re unloved.

    It just means you’re the one who loves hardest —

    in silence,

    in absence,

    in the fog.

  • Stuck

    You’re not stuck because you can’t, you’re stuck because you won’t.

    That line won’t stop echoing in my head. It’s brutal — because it’s true.

    I’ve spent so long blaming the world, the pain, the past, the people who broke me. But the truth is, I’ve built my own walls and then called them safety. I’ve chosen the comfort of misery over the risk of change. It’s easier to sit in the ruin I know than to walk toward something uncertain.

    There’s a twisted kind of peace in staying stuck — it asks nothing of me except surrender. No effort, no failure, just the quiet hum of stagnation disguised as survival.

    But I know better. I’m not trapped — I’m avoiding. Avoiding the climb, the fall, the chance that something might actually work out. Because what if it doesn’t? What if I get free and still feel empty?

    Maybe that’s the scariest part — realizing I could move, but choosing not to.

  • When the Fire Comes

    Photo Credit: Adam Wilson

    Rage is roaring like a fire out of control.

    It starts small — a flicker, a tremor in my chest — then suddenly it’s everywhere. Burning through reason, devouring silence, leaving only ash behind.

    I don’t even know what I’m angry at half the time. Maybe it’s everything. Maybe it’s myself. The way I keep trying to hold it all together when I know damn well I’m unraveling.

    There’s a part of me that wants to scream until my voice gives out. To throw something, to break something, just to prove I still exist — that there’s something alive inside me after all the numbness.

    But I don’t. I swallow it. I smile when I’m supposed to. I nod when people talk. I hide the fire and let it burn me from the inside out.

    Sometimes I think rage is just grief wearing armor — a way to feel powerful when all I really feel is broken.

  • I Just Want Someone to Save Me

    Photo Credit: lilartsy

    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.

  • Ghost in My Own Skin

    Photo Credit “lilartsy”

    Dead with a pulse

    and softly losing control,

    I move through rooms like smoke,

    breathing but not alive,

    fading but still here,

    a ghost in my own skin

    no one notices.

    Sometimes I wonder if I even notice myself anymore.

    There’s a strange kind of comfort in invisibility—

    it saves me from the weight of pretending.

    But it’s lonely, too.

    To exist in the space between seen and unseen,

    alive and not really living.

    Maybe this is what it means to disappear

    without ever leaving.

  • 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.