What will I do tomorrow? I am not asking in a way that tells me what my day entails, but in a psychological manner. What will I feel tomorrow? Will I feel the same—despair, hunger, drive, or nothing? Will I look up ways to go, or will I wake up with a different outlook on life?
———
I was around ten. That part matters less than the feeling. I was young enough to notice things adults didn't, young enough not to know how to lie to myself yet. I was at my sister's school book fair. It was loud, overstimulating, meaningless noise. I remember stopping because something felt wrong.
There was a small girl standing there.
Nothing was happening to her. No crying. No visible distress. She wasn't upset in a way that asked for help. She was just… gone. Her face was empty. Her body was still. Her eyes were open and reflective, but vacant. People were talking to her. She didn't respond. She didn't resist either. She wasn't choosing silence. She wasn't choosing anything.
She wasn't present.
I didn't have the language for it then, but what I was seeing was someone who had already checked out of themselves. A child who had learned—somehow—that being there wasn't safe, or useful, or worth the effort. I remember feeling unsettled because it didn't look like sadness. It looked like absence.
I wanted someone to explain it to me. I think I tried. I probably said something small and uncertain, like "She looks sad." I don't remember being taken seriously. I remember dropping it. I remember walking away and doing what I learned to do early: swallowing the feeling and moving on.
That moment never left because it wasn't really about her.
It was the first time I recognized myself before I knew I was allowed to exist.
———
There's a part of me that understands exactly when this started, even if I pretend I don't. It wasn't one event. Nothing dramatic enough to justify how I feel now. That's part of the problem. There's no clear villain. No moment I can point to and say "This is where it broke." It was quieter than that. A slow learning.
I learned that being honest didn't change anything. I learned that needing something made me smaller. I learned that people respond better to what's easy.
So I became easy.
I've spent my life learning how to disappear while still being visible.
I learned how to perform happiness before I learned how to understand myself. I learned how to be funny, agreeable, energetic. I learned how to fill silence so no one would look too closely. I didn't do this consciously. It wasn't manipulation. It was instinct. It worked. People liked me. I was tolerated. Sometimes I was wanted.
But none of it required me.
I learned how to read rooms quickly. I learned how to adjust myself just enough to fit. I learned how to say the thing that would keep things moving. I learned how not to ask for more. I learned how not to want too loudly. I learned how to make myself acceptable.
Every time I did that, something small disappeared. Not enough to notice at first. Just enough that it felt safer.
That's how it always works. You don't lose yourself all at once. You trade pieces away in moments where staying intact feels too risky. By the time I noticed, there wasn't much left to protect.
———
As I got older, the performance became quieter, more controlled. Less hyperactive, more restrained. I learned when to shut up. I learned which parts of myself were unwelcome. I learned that speaking honestly didn't lead to connection—it led to dismissal. So I stopped trying. I began editing myself before anyone else could.
My father was screaming at me. I don't remember what I'd done—maybe it was something bad, maybe that's why he was so angry. I was around twelve. I was scared because my mother wasn't there to defend me, to speak up for me. I wanted to say something but I kept my mouth shut, sealed tight.
I'm a failure. Ugly. Stupid. I don't deserve to be alive.
Were you lying then? Why did you take me to the hospital? Why did you save me when I was dying? You should have let me drown. I should have choked—you should have just watched me turn blue and expire. You should have let the sickness take me. Let me rot. So many opportunities.
I remember thinking I couldn't wait to grow up, to make something of this life. I kept counting the days until I could move away. I had a plan. Maybe the vision was too grand.
———
The gym wasn't about health. It was about control. It was about punishing my body until my mind shut up. It was about having a reason to be exhausted so I didn't have to think. When that stopped working, I pushed harder. When that failed, I stopped caring. I repeat this pattern everywhere: effort, obsession, burnout, withdrawal.
Not because I'm lazy. Because nothing feels worth staying for.
I don't quit because I don't care. I quit because caring hurts too much.
Most days, I wake up and don't think of my body as a failure, but there are times in life when I wake up, look down, and see a broken body. I see a human that couldn't have been possible. I have been rebuilt. I have been modified to work. My body never lies. My mind tells a different story.
I am so used to what I am that when people ask what's wrong with me, I stop understanding the question—because to me, I am normal. I don't feel abnormal right now, but I wanted to write that at times I wish I was normal. I wish I had two working legs instead of one. Maybe that's what started the way I think. Always feeling broken.
That was before. Before the fracture became permanent, in body and in mind.
———
When I was younger, I remember looking up to you. You had a place. You were fun. You were well-liked, and the only flaw I saw was the alcoholism that consumed you. I would always ask myself why you would put yourself in a situation where you were absent—you, such a joker, a very funny person. When you left and moved back to our small town, back to our country, I missed you. So did all of us. I would hear my family share fond memories of you.
It wasn't until recently, when I heard my father say you wanted out much sooner, that it hit me.
Everyone knew. But it is hard to reach out.
You died so young compared to everyone around you who was about the same age as you. I see them still aging, but I can only see an image of you no longer aging. Time stopped for you.
I cry alone because it's the only time I'm real. I hide because being seen feels like a threat. I perform because I don't believe the real me would be tolerated. I am starting to resemble you.
———
The reason the girl at the book fair still matters is simple.
I became her.
I didn't become sad. I didn't become broken. I became absent.
People think dissociation is spacing out. Daydreaming. Being tired. It's not that. It's standing in your own life and feeling like you're watching someone else manage it. It's hearing your own voice and feeling surprised it came from you. It's knowing what you should feel and feeling nothing instead.
It's not numbness exactly. It's distance.
The feeling I carry isn't just loneliness. It's erasure. I exist in rooms, at work, with friends, with family—and I'm not there. I respond, I smile, I say the right things. But internally, I am somewhere else, watching myself do it. There is a distance between who I am and what people interact with, and that distance keeps growing.
I still react. I still laugh. I still get irritated, still feel brief flashes of motivation or connection. But none of it lands. Nothing sticks. Everything passes through me without leaving a mark. Even pain doesn't stay long enough to feel real. That scares me more than sadness ever did.
Sadness meant I was still here.
Now everything feels muted, flattened, irrelevant. Even the things I claim to want feel abstract, like goals someone else wrote down for me. I chase them out of habit, not desire. I don't know what I want because wanting feels pointless when nothing fills the space.
———
I remember feeling like this many times. One recent memory still floods my mind: I was going about my usual day—woke up, showered, got ready, and headed to the gym. I was working out. Usually it helps me forget. It helps with my mental clarity. But that day I was tired. I was afraid. I felt alone.
I had a couple of nicotine pouches. I got up and threw the entire pack away. I didn't want to feel like that ever again.
It was the damn nicotine, I told myself.
But it wasn't.
I still feel like that. I still feel empty.
———
I'm twenty years old, and I'm tired of pretending this is something I'll grow out of. I'm tired of telling myself I should know better. I'm tired of trying to fix this with discipline, routines, productivity, self-improvement. None of that touches the core problem.
The core problem is this: I don't feel like a real person anymore. I feel like an empty structure that learned how to move.
People tell me I'm doing fine. That I'm disciplined. That I'm self-aware. That I'm thoughtful. I nod. I say thanks. I don't correct them. It's easier to let them believe that than to explain that none of it feels true from the inside.
They don't see how much effort it takes to remain functional. They don't see how often I think about disappearing—not dramatically, not violently, just quietly. Slipping out of things. Letting connections fade. Letting days pass without participating in them.
I don't want to die. I just don't feel attached to being alive.
There's a difference, but it's a thin one, and I'm aware of that.
And yes—I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of how disconnected I am. I'm afraid of how little I care about staying. I'm afraid that if I stop performing, there will be nothing underneath—no identity, no desire, no reason.
I'm afraid because part of me already feels gone.
———
I don't tell people how I feel because I already know how it ends. Either they don't understand, or they look at me differently, or I feel exposed and stupid for trying. So I talk about this like it's in the past. Like it's something I already survived. I keep the present hidden because the present feels dangerous.
When I imagine stopping the performance, I don't imagine relief. I imagine collapse. Silence. Nothingness. I imagine people looking at me with confusion or disappointment. I imagine myself realizing that without usefulness, without humor, without effort, there's nothing that justifies my presence.
So I keep going.
I wake up. I do what I'm supposed to do. I go through motions that resemble progress. I tell myself this is temporary. That everyone feels like this sometimes. That it will pass if I just keep moving.
But years have passed like this.
And the most frightening part isn't the emptiness—it's how familiar it feels. How normal it has become. How little resistance I have left to it. I've adapted to absence the same way I adapted to everything else.
Quietly. Efficiently. Without asking for help.
———
Sometimes I catch myself in reflective surfaces—mirrors, windows, my phone screen—and I see it again. That same look. Eyes open, attentive, slightly bright. A face that looks fine. A person who appears present.
That shimmer.
It isn't hope. It isn't peace. It's vigilance.
It's the look of someone who learned to stay alert while being gone. Someone who never fully relaxes because relaxing would mean feeling everything they've been avoiding. Someone who exists just enough to get through the day and no more.
That shimmer in the eyes isn't hope or joy. It's dissociation. It's the look of someone who learned to leave themselves behind to survive. It's what happens when you're still breathing, still functioning, but no longer emotionally participating in your own life.
People talk to me now and I hear them, but I'm not there. I respond automatically. I don't feel connected to what I'm saying. I don't feel connected to them. I don't feel connected to myself.
I think that's why the memory hasn't faded. Not because it was important in itself, but because it was a warning I didn't understand yet. I saw where this path led before I ever stepped fully onto it.
I didn't save that girl. I didn't even speak to her.
And no one saved me either.
———
Now I'm here, years later, aware of myself in a way that doesn't help. Conscious enough to name what's wrong, detached enough not to fix it. Trapped between insight and inertia. Between fear and indifference.
I don't feel dramatic about it. I don't feel desperate most days. I feel tired. Flat. Removed. Like I've already accepted something I never consciously agreed to.
When I look at myself honestly, I don't see potential or resilience. I see someone who failed quietly. Someone who didn't become anything. Someone who let time pass and watched their life shrink. I feel shame—not dramatic shame, just a constant low-level disgust with myself for still being here like this.
I don't know how to come back. I don't know if I remember how to want to.
I only know that I'm still here, still watching, still performing presence while feeling increasingly unreal. And I don't know how much longer that version of me can keep going without either disappearing completely or finally breaking the silence.
