Lately nights had started feeling longer than they actually were.
I would lie down for hours staring at the ceiling while the rest of the house slept peacefully, as if sleep was something normal people received naturally. For me it had become something distant. Something I chased but never reached.
Every night followed the same pattern.
Close my eyes. Try to sleep. Fail. Overthink. Get up. Walk around. Drink water. Open random books. Sit near the window. Repeat.
At some point I stopped checking the time because watching hours pass only made everything feel worse.
The strange thing about emotional exhaustion is that it doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it just looks like a girl quietly walking through dark hallways at 3 a.m. because her own thoughts refuse to let her rest.
During the day I could distract myself. Noise helped. Conversations helped. Even fake laughter helped. But nights stripped everything away.
That's when memories returned.
Not loudly. Not violently.
Just quietly enough to hurt.
I started realizing how alert my body had become lately. Even small sounds made me uneasy. Footsteps. Doors opening unexpectedly. Pages turning. Sometimes I would hear something and immediately look up as though my mind expected danger without reason.
Maybe prolonged sadness changes people physically too.
Or maybe some people simply never learn what safety feels like.
People think strength means handling everything alone without breaking. Tbh I used to think that too. But exhaustion slowly teaches you that surviving and living are two completely different things.
Sometimes I wondered whether anyone around me noticed how tired I had become.
Probably not.
People notice loud pain. Quiet pain usually goes unseen.
And maybe that was why I stopped explaining myself a long time ago.
Because explaining things repeatedly only to be misunderstood becomes exhausting after a while.
Still, despite everything, mornings continued arriving normally.
The world outside moved forward without caring whether I had survived another sleepless night or not.
And honestly? That realization hurt more than loneliness sometimes.