The prelude to a farewell letter

I keep a spine that bends toward fairness, and every time I straighten it, the doorway shrinks. "your disrespect borders apathy" dictations of trouble scribbled into me. In truth, I notice the weight placed on backs already tired, the hours that leak past daylight, the pay that never learns to grow. So I’m released again— another quiet box for my name, storage neatly comparted for my shame. another lesson that integrity doesn’t rent well in this economy. So I find solace in my room. The glow of a screen doesn’t ask what I’ve become. In games, I'm useful. I complete things. I matter in ways that don’t have to sit through monthly performance reviews. Outside the door, my family counts absences and mistakes them for choice. They think I’m turning away from them, when really I’m hiding the wreckage so they don’t have to trip over it. They say lazy. They don’t see how exhaustion can look like stillness. How escape can be the last place a person goes to breathe. I wear my failures louder than anyone else does. No one sharpens the blade like I do. No one rehearses my worthlessness with such dedication. I wish they knew this silence isn’t punishment, isn’t spite— it’s a shelter made of fear, a place to sit with the question of who you are when the world keeps sending you back. I'm not lost because I didn’t try. I'm lost because I did. And I’m still here, holding the map upside down, waiting for someone to say that trying mattered. Please say it before the wind sweeps the last of my footprints off the sand before I can't find my way back home.

medicatedromantic

"Tell me about yourself" I'm still finding that out still wondering doubting and dreaming like a typhoon of emotions and being creating new life within me. I am not yet born.

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