Rising

It’s almost two in the morning, and my head’s splitting. The pain’s constant, pulsing with every beat of my heart. There’s no escaping it. The TV flickers, cold light bouncing off the walls like it doesn’t care. I roll over again, hoping for some kind of relief, but my body fights me. It won’t stop.

I want to yell, but I don’t. It wouldn’t do a damn thing. All I want is sleep. Deep, heavy, erasing sleep. But instead, I feel this weight pressing down on me—thick, suffocating. The night drags on, and I’m stuck in this room, in this body, with the ache in my skull. Time crawls. Morning feels so far away, and I start to wonder if it’ll ever show up.

This is the part of my life no one knows about. The part no one bothers asking about. They don’t see what it’s like, locked in your own mind, hurting, while the world keeps spinning. They see the pictures—the smiles, the vacations, the clean, simple moments.

They see the dinners, the laughter, the drinks around the table. They see the life that looks easy. But they don’t see what happens after. They don’t see the pain I bury, the exhaustion that hangs on no matter what. It’s like living two lives—the one they think is real and the one that’s slowly breaking me down from the inside out.

I’m tired. Not the kind of tired sleep fixes. I’m tired of fighting myself. Tired of fighting the people I thought were on my side. The ones I trusted without thinking twice. It wears you out, finding out they’re not who you thought they were. That what you thought was the truth was just smoke.

There’s a heaviness in that. A slow, steady sadness that wraps around you and won’t let go. It’s hard, being let down by the people you love. And I’m tired. Tired of carrying it all. Tired of trying to hold everything together when everything’s falling apart.

It’s hard to keep track of time when everything’s spinning. Even harder to keep track of all the madness when the chaos never stops. A year ago, I thought I’d hit bottom. Thought there was nowhere lower to fall. I was wrong. That was just the start of it.

Maybe that’s how it works. The end comes slowly, in pieces, until it all crashes down. Or maybe this isn’t the end at all. Maybe this is the beginning. Something new, rising from what’s left.