Will There Ever Be a Time?

I keep wondering if there will ever be a point in my life where I can just exist without some part of me wanting to disappear.

I know how that sounds.

My first instinct is always to downplay it. To tell myself I’m being dramatic. To remind myself that other people have it worse. To list all the reasons I should be grateful.

But if I’m being honest, it’s exhausting.

Not because I spend every waking second wanting to die. I don’t. Most days I go to work. I pay my bills. I laugh. I write. I spend time with people I love. From the outside, life keeps moving.

It’s the constant negotiation that wears me down.

The way my mind always seems to keep one foot near the door.

The way every hard season eventually turns into a conversation about whether I have the strength to keep doing this.

The way relief can sometimes feel more appealing than living.

I don’t think I want death as much as I want the pain to stop.

I want the grief to stop.

The anxiety.

The loneliness.

The endless cycle of trying to heal while feeling too overwhelmed to actually heal.

I want my nervous system to stop treating every loss like a crisis.

I want my body to stop carrying things that happened years ago as if they’re still happening now.

I want to know what it feels like to be alive without constantly having to talk myself into staying.

Maybe that’s what I’m really mourning.

Not my life.

Just how hard living has felt for so long.

And I wonder if there are people who wake up and don’t have this conversation with themselves.

People who aren’t constantly weighing the burden of existence.

People who just… live.

Part of me hopes those people are real.

Because if they are, maybe this isn’t forever.

Maybe there will be a day when survival isn’t the main thing I’m focused on.

A day when my mind stops scanning for exits.

A day when being alive feels less like an obligation and more like something I genuinely want.

I don’t know if that day exists.