There are many thoughts I'd like to forget.
This is one of them.
The last thing I remember is the cold.
Not the cold of this place. A different cold. The chill of bathroom tiles against my skin. The drip of water from the faucet, each drop a tiny hammer against the silence.
I spent my life looking at the ground. At scuffed shoes, at cracks in the pavement, at the space just in front of my feet.
Anywhere but up. I never saw their faces. Just their shadows, stretching long and dark over me.
Every day was a stone added to the pile on my chest. I'd try to shrug them off, to breathe, but the thought was always there, a whisper in the back of my skull: maybe the only way to feel light again was to stop feeling anything at all.
I was an island. I wore my loneliness like a coat, and I thought I deserved its weight. I thought it was all I was meant to have.
I'd go to the park. I'd talk to myself, my own voice the only one I knew. I'd watch the sun fight behind the clouds, waiting for a warmth that never came.
Of course it doesn't, I'd think. Why should it?
I'd do favors. Small, quiet things. Hoping for a glance, a word, a single moment of connection. A sign that I existed to anyone but myself.
It never came. Their smiles were for the favor, not for me. I was a ghost performing chores.
And then, the few people I dared to look at… they didn't just look away.
They laughed. The sound didn't bounce off me. It stuck. It built up inside, a wall of noise I couldn't escape.
Then came the quietest moment of them all.
The rattle of the pill bottle. A sound so small, so final.
I sat on that cold floor, my back against the wall, and I held them in my palm. Little white promises of silence.
In another life,
i thought, the last spark of something that wasn't pain,
things could have been different.
But not in this one.
Loneliness. I never wanted to feel that again.
Weak and fragile. I never wanted to be called that again.
Next thing I know, I was on the way to hell.
Because my life wasn't enough, right?
Next thing I know, I'm feared by everyone.
Because my life wasn't enough, right?
Next thing I know, I still hate myself.
Because my life wasn't enough, right?
—
A sharp knock on the door shattered everything.
"Breakfast is ready, Master."