She dragged herself out of bed the same way someone drags a broken suitcase ; half-heartedly and with a tiny bit of shame. School wasn't hard; pretending was. Pretending she slept well. Pretending she ate breakfast. Pretending she cared.
Everyone thought she was "quiet".
Cute label.
They didn't see the nights she lay awake staring at the ceiling, feeling her heartbeat fight through panic like a glitching metronome.
She wasn't sad for a reason.
That's the annoying part.
There was no big tragedy, no heartbreak, no massive downfall. Just a long, slow erosion. Like waves carving rock.....soft, steady, unstoppable.
She ate lunch alone on purpose. People talked too loudly. Laughed too easily. Lived too lightly. She envied them without meaning to.
Sometimes she wondered if anyone ever noticed how tired she looked. Like tired wasn't even the right word...it was an exhaustion stitched into her bones. A kind of heaviness that made even getting a glass of water feel like a quest she didn't sign up for.
At home, the silence felt heavier than the noise outside.
Her parents weren't bad people. They just… didn't notice. They assumed good grades meant a good life. They assumed the closed door meant privacy, not a quiet war she was losing night after night.
Every night was the same ritual.....scrolling through her phone until her eyes burned, staring at the soft glow like it was the only thing keeping her anchored.
It didn't help.
But stopping made it worse.
Somewhere between midnight and three, her thoughts got loud.
Like the world was muted, but her brain was stuck on full volume.
Why am I like this?
Why can't I just be normal?
Why does everything feel like too much and nothing at all?
That's the thing no one tells you about sadness without a cause...you feel guilty for feeling it. Like you're stealing someone else's tragedy.