I have lived half my life

inside rooms that hum like machines.

Rooms that smell of disinfectant and rain,

where the clocks tick louder than my heartbeat

and the silence has teeth.

The first time I went in,

they told me it was temporary.

Just until the world stopped spinning,

until I could breathe without drowning.

But the world kept spinning,

and I kept sinking,

and time became a hallway I could never leave.

There were white coats, kind eyes,

voices that spoke in careful tones —

as if one wrong word

might shatter what was left of me.

And maybe they were right.

Because back then,

I was glass pretending to be bone.

I learned the rhythm of locked doors,

the sigh of paper wristbands,

the taste of pills dissolving under my tongue.

I learned that healing isn’t a moment —

it’s a loop,

a cycle,

a cruel kind of déjà vu.

Time after time after time again,

I returned.

Different faces, same walls.

New scars, same ache.

The nurses changed,

the air didn’t.

At night, I’d lie in my bed and listen

to the hum of the building breathing.

Somewhere down the hall,

someone would be crying —

a quiet, broken sound,

like a child trying to remember

what comfort feels like.

And I’d whisper back,

“I know.”

Because I did.

Depression isn’t a monster.

It’s the fog that blurs your reflection

until you forget you were ever human.

It’s waking up and wishing you hadn’t.

It’s smiling so people stop asking,

and crying in bathrooms

because you can’t hold it anymore.

Anxiety is her sister —

a frantic, trembling ghost.

She lives in my chest,

knocking on my ribs like a desperate thing,

asking, are you sure you can do this?

And I never know how to answer.

Because I’m never sure.

There were mornings when the light hurt.

When breathing felt like betrayal.

When I’d stare at my hands

and wonder how they could still move

when everything inside me wanted to stop.

The nurses told me to write.

So I did.

I filled notebooks with half-sentences

and trembling thoughts.

Sometimes I wrote just to prove

that I was still here.

Sometimes I didn’t write at all,

because words felt too heavy to hold.

There’s a particular ache

in watching seasons change through windows.

Winter to spring,

spring to fall,

all from the same chair by the same wall.

The trees outside healed faster than I did.

People visited less each time.

At first, there were flowers,

cards, promises of “you’ll be okay.”

Later, there were excuses.

Then, nothing.

Silence became my only company —

and even she stopped showing up some nights.

You start to measure your life

in the language of relapse.

How long since the last time?

How bad was it this time?

Did you eat?

Did you try?

I became fluent in the vocabulary of surviving.

But surviving is not the same as living.

Living is sunlight and laughter.

Surviving is breathing because you have to.

It’s counting minutes.

It’s whispering “not yet”

to a ceiling that never answers back.

I used to think death was the only escape.

Not because I wanted to die —

but because I didn’t know

how to live with this weight forever.

It’s a strange thing,

to want peace more than anything

and to fear what it costs.

There were nights when I held myself

like a child,

rocking back and forth,

mouthing promises I didn’t believe:

You’ll make it. You’ll make it. You’ll make it.

And sometimes that was enough

to get me through till morning.

They say time heals,

but time just repeats.

It circles back like a song

stuck on the saddest verse.

Every year, another stay.

Another name tag.

Another bed.

Another “you’re doing better,”

followed by the slow slide down again.

And yet —

somewhere in the endless gray,

something small kept glowing.

A stubborn ember.

Maybe it was hope,

or maybe just defiance.

But it whispered:

You’ve made it this far.

So I kept breathing.

I kept showing up,

even when it felt pointless.

I let the world move around me

until one day,

I noticed I was moving too.

Not running,

not flying —

just moving.

Slowly,

awkwardly,

like someone learning to stand again

after years of being underwater.

The scars didn’t fade,

but they stopped screaming.

The rooms didn’t disappear,

but I stopped living in them.

The sadness still visits,

but it doesn’t unpack its bags anymore.

Sometimes, I still wake up afraid.

The air still feels too sharp.

The world still feels too big.

But then I remember —

I’ve made it through every night

that swore it would kill me.

And that means something.

It has to.

Because maybe survival

is the miracle.

Maybe the point isn’t to be unbroken,

but to live as something cracked and breathing,

still here,

still trying,

time after time after time again.