Through the Fog

Tag: Mental Health

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • What is Wrong With Me?

    What is wrong with me? Why am I addicted to this miserable feeling?

    I don’t even know when the line blurred, when pain stopped being something to run from and started becoming something I crave. It’s like I’ve carved out a home inside of misery, built walls around it, and now I don’t know how to live without it. And in the back of my mind, the question gnaws at me: is it just the mental illness?

    People think addiction is about chasing pleasure, chasing a high, chasing escape. But for me, it’s about clinging to what’s familiar. Misery is predictable. Pain is reliable. Happiness feels like a stranger I can’t trust—it slips away as quickly as it comes. Misery stays. And maybe that’s the illness too—this twisted need to settle for what hurts, to feel safest inside the suffering.

    Sometimes I wonder if my brain was wired wrong from the start. If the illness isn’t just something I have, but something I am. Is that why I drink? Is that why I hold tight to the wreckage instead of crawling out? Maybe it isn’t weakness. Maybe it’s just the illness feeding itself, keeping me trapped.

    Because the truth is, it’s not just the bottle I’m addicted to—it’s the aftermath. The heaviness, the regret, the cycle of self-destruction. I hate it, yet I chase it. Again and again, like it’s the only thing that belongs to me. And every time, I hear the echo: this is the illness, this is the illness.

    So what is wrong with me? Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s all just the way the illness wraps itself around my soul, convincing me that misery is home. Or maybe everything. Maybe I’ve become so tangled in the darkness that even when the door is open, I can’t step out.

    And the cruelest truth? A part of me doesn’t even want to.

  • 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.

  • Dear Mom

    Dear Mom,

    It was never your fault.

    Not the silence.

    Not the weight I carried alone.

    Not the way I learned to disappear inside myself.

    You did what you could with the tools you had.

    You held storms in your chest

    so they would not spill onto me.

    You taught me strength,

    even if it came wrapped in quiet.

    I used to wonder why you couldn’t save me

    from every shadow.

    Now I see you were fighting your own,

    and still, somehow,

    you gave me light where you could.

    Dear Mom,

    I don’t blame you.

    I don’t carry anger anymore.

    I carry understanding.

    I carry forgiveness.

    I carry you.

    It was never your fault.

    It never will be.

    Love,

    The child who finally knows

    you did the best you could.

  • 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.