When Time Fails to Heal
People always say, “Give it time,” as if time alone is some kind of medicine. But they never tell you what to do when the days keep passing and nothing changes. When the wound doesn’t close, when the pain lingers like a dull ache that never fully goes away. Time moves forward, but I feel stuck—like I’ve been frozen in place, watching the world spin around me while I stay the same, drowning in memories I can’t escape. Everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I dream of, and everything I want to happen are things I can do and work on and fix. But why am I not doing anything? I ask myself this over and over. I know I can do these things, yet I don’t. I tell myself to just get up, just start, just try, but nothing happens. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I feel paralyzed, like I’m trapped inside my own body, screaming at myself to move while my limbs refuse. The worst part? I know people are watching, waiting, judging. They think I’m lazy. That I don’t care. But I do. More than anything, I do. And that’s what hurts the most—caring so much but feeling powerless to change anything. There’s a disconnect between what I know and what I feel. I know I’m capable. I know I have potential. I know life keeps moving, with or without me. But every time I try to push myself, I hit an invisible wall, and suddenly, even the smallest task feels impossible. It’s like running toward an open door only to have it slam shut just before I reach it. I’m not the kind of tired that sleep can fix. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones, that makes every movement feel heavy, that makes the thought of getting through another day feel unbearable. I sleep and sleep, yet I wake up exhausted. Because it’s not my body that’s tired—it’s my soul. People think exhaustion is just about physical energy, but this is different. It’s waking up and feeling like you’ve already lost a battle before the day has even started. It’s carrying a weight so heavy that no one else can see. It’s watching people go about their lives so effortlessly, while every step I take feels like I’m dragging chains behind me. I hear them when they say I’m lazy. When they complain that I don’t study enough. That I don’t do enough. That I’m not enough. I pretend their words don’t hurt, but they do. Because if they only knew how much effort it takes just to exist, just to make it through the day without breaking apart, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to judge. Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Why can’t I wake up without feeling like the world is crushing me? Why can’t I find joy in the little things the way I used to? Why can’t I love the way I once did? I used to have so much love in my heart. Now, it feels empty, hollow. And it scares me to think I might never feel whole again. There are things I keep locked away, things I don’t have the words for. If I say them out loud, will that make them more real? Or will it just break me further? The past isn’t just the past—it’s a shadow that follows me everywhere, whispering reminders of everything I’ve lost, everything that’s broken inside me. It feels like quicksand—the more I fight, the deeper I sink. I’ve tried to push forward, to pretend I’m fine, to act like the pain isn’t eating me alive. But the truth is, I’m exhausted from pretending. I’m exhausted from trying. And I don’t know how much more I have left to give. I don’t know how to ask for help. And when I do, it feels like no one really listens. Like my words are just echoes in an empty room. So I keep it all inside. I bottle it up, shove it down, until it spills over in moments I can’t control—until I explode in ways I don’t mean to. And then people call me moody, difficult, too sensitive. They don’t see the battle I fight just to keep breathing. I wish I could believe in a future where things get better. I wish I could picture myself happy. But hope feels like a distant memory, like something I lost a long time ago. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. there’s no more love in my heart and it hurts cause i used to be filled with love and all i wanted was to love and be loved but i have no more love in my heart, my heart hurts, my hearts crying and cutting me deeper every day. i don’t think i’ll ever be able to live normally, be human. there’s not much left of me, just a body that won’t do much anyway, mentally i’m done and i’m gone. People talk about grief as something tied to loss—the loss of a loved one, the loss of a place, the loss of time. But what about the loss of yourself? What about waking up one day and realizing that the person you once were no longer exists? That they slipped away, slowly, quietly, while you weren’t paying attention. That you didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. I used to have hope. I used to have love in my heart, so much love that it felt infinite, like I could pour it into the world forever and never run out. I used to laugh without forcing it, smile without thinking about it. I used to dream about the future—not just as a concept, but as something real, something bright and full of possibility. I used to be alive in a way that i can’t seem to be anymore. And now? Now, I feel like a ghost of myself. Like a hollow version of the person I was supposed to be. The things that once brought me joy feel distant, like echoes of a life that no longer belongs to me. I try to remember what it felt like to be me—the real me, the me before the pain, before the exhaustion, before the weight of everything became too heavy to carry. But all I find are fragments, blurry and unreachable, like trying to hold onto smoke. How do you mourn someone who’s still alive but no longer there? How do you grieve the loss of yourself when your body is still here, still breathing, still moving through the world as if nothing has changed? There is no funeral for this kind of death. No closure. No condolences. No one brings flowers or whispers soft apologies. Because no one sees it happening. No one sees me disappearing. I walk through life carrying the weight of a death that no one else acknowledges. The death of my own spirit, my own fire. And the cruelest part? The world doesn’t stop. It doesn’t pause for even a second to acknowledge what’s been lost. It keeps going, expecting me to keep up, to function, to perform, to exist as if I haven’t already faded into nothing. Maybe that’s why I feel so invisible. Because in many ways, I am—not in the literal sense, but in the way that matters. In the way that makes a person feel real. I don’t know if there’s a way to bring myself back. I don’t know if the version of me I mourn is gone forever, or if she’s buried somewhere deep inside, waiting for something—someone—to wake her up. But what I do know is that mourning yourself is the loneliest kind of grief. Because no one else understands that you are already gone. forever i’ll be asking myself why i couldn’t bring myself to end it, even with all the tries, all the pain, all the cry’s for help. why couldn’t i do it. sometimes i can’t help but wonder if my cries out loud weren’t loud enough, or that they did notice but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. so yeah i am the way i am because of everything i went through and yes my heart is filled with hurt and anger more than it is with love but i still feel empathy for a-lot of people, no matter what some of them did to me, no matter how much they caused me, because i know what they’re going through and i know what makes someone act the way they did, especially when they were the sweetest and nicest people ever cause i was too. though right now my heart only carries love for really few people, that one person who hurt me i deeply know and i know that it wasn’t intentional but it was a cry for help will always be in my heart. maybe that’s why i can’t fully let myself heal, and maybe i’ll never know how to do anything without damaging myself emotionally again but i just know i will never be able to handle the pain of losing anyone anymore. really i don’t think about what has happened to me but it always hunts me its always in my head even when i’m trying to think about something else and even when i’m doing something and even when i’m sleeping, it’s always there. i really understand how someone can be really nice and all of a sudden become a mean, angry, “heartless” person, that happened to me. i know that the scars you can’t see are truly the hardest to heal, and that’s something not everyone can understand. i would love a world where people cared about mental health and understood how hard it is to be struggling and to not be helped or heard because sometimes all a hurting person wants is to be actually listened to. the worst place anyone can be is in their own head when it’s filled with traumatic voices. the soul that has been shattered knows a pain no words can ever explain, it’s a cut that will always and forever bleed. sometimes people stay with the wrong person, no matter how toxic or abusive they are because they were able to see them in a way no one can ever see, the real them, the real hurt and in a way they will never be able to show anyone else and no one else would feel their void. so when they do meet a new person, they will dress their selves up in a way that the new person will never actually get to know them. so explaining trauma, loss, hurt, anger to a new person especially if they are “normal” is almost impossible for me, just like how believing in god is so hard when you have been through everything in your life and not once was their signs of him. when i’ve begged him to help me, just for a little light, and mercy, not a single hint of him, so believing he is real is incredibly difficult and will always be no matter how much religion books i read, no matter how much religious people try to make me believe, it’s something so hard and it’s something i will never have faith in because of what has happened to me and probably lots of other people who’ve never had a prayer been answered and have never seen light no matter how much we’ve tried to believe in a god. i’ll leave this earth still having a lot of unanswered questions, unanswered prayers, and an unhealed soul. People like to say that time heals all wounds, but what if that’s not true? What if some wounds are too deep to ever fully close? What if some pain lingers forever, no matter how much time passes? I don’t know if I’ll ever heal. I don’t know if I’ll ever find peace. But I do know that I’m still here. And maybe, for now, that has to be enough. some wounds never heal. some stories end before they find peace.
