The silence the Lives Inside

some days, it feels like i’m drowning in air, the kind of breath that scrapes your lungs raw, and i wonder if i’ll ever remember how it felt to be anything other than tired of existing. i see people move through life like it’s easy, like there’s a script i never learned, and i’m a spectator in my own skin, watching my hands go through motions i don’t feel, saying words i barely hear. they think they know me— they don’t see the hollow inside, the parts of me that feel unfinished, the places where i keep my distance, where i smile, nod, say the right things, and none of it reaches the ache underneath. there’s a darkness so sharp it’s nauseating, a noise in my head like static, like screaming, like everything inside wants to claw its way out, and i am quiet, always quiet, while the pain drowns me in silence. i don’t know how to touch happiness anymore, or even sorrow, not the real kind, just this numb ache, this emptiness where i should feel something, anything— but it’s all lost, slipping through fingers i barely believe are mine. sometimes i wonder if i’m a person at all or just a cracked shell pretending, and it hurts, god, it hurts, because i am so close to everyone and yet a thousand miles from myself, no warmth, no sympathy, no empathy, just this empty performance that i can’t remember how to stop. and no one sees it—the way i’m slipping, how existing feels like a weight i can’t carry, how every day tastes a little more bitter, how every hour feels just a little further from where i thought life would be. i am here but i’m not here, a shadow with a voice, a ghost with hands, and i wonder if anyone could ever look past the mask long enough to see the silence tearing me apart from the inside out.