Dear Self,
It’s been a while since we talked here. Life has been a train wreck as usual. Trying to understand your place in the world or even trying to heal from bad stuff is not the easiest thing to do, especially when you’ve been feeling your entire world collapsing under its own weight.
That’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and one question keeps boggling me: What do I really feel?
I can’t remember the last time I felt a single feeling—good or bad—that wasn’t associated with stress. Everything is coated, almost poisoned, by anxiety. I’ve had panic attacks for most of my adult life so far, but never like this. Crippling anxiety every day, every hour—a miserable feeling pulling you down, making you feel like not only will nothing get better, but quite the contrary: you haven’t even reached the end of the fall yet, and you’re about to hit the floor hard.
Don’t get me wrong—no matter how many times I say I feel numb, I do have my moments where I feel temporary emotions. I’ve felt happy for 20 minutes, until anxiety kicked back in to masquerade everything. I’ve felt sad for a few moments, until it collapsed into an anxiety spiral. I’ve felt fearless, only for it to disappear with the first hiccup.
I wasn’t always like that. I remember being more stable, but even according to the diagnosis I received a few weeks ago, it feels like even that doesn’t fully describe the burden.
“Major Depressive Episode.”
Oh really? I was always depressed—why is it suddenly now labeled as major? What changed?
Well, I know what changed.
Every single thing I relied on either collapsed or ran away from me.
I’ve become fed up with the way I live.
I’ve become fed up with how unfair life can be.
I’ve become fed up with how selfish people can be—how unable they are to compromise to make something work or to keep something working.
I’ve become fed up with being the Mom in my relationships.
I’ve become fed up with my own self.
One thing that contributed to all this was the feeling that my phone wouldn’t stop ringing with bad news.
A person close to me has cancer.
Another one had a heart attack.
A third pushed me away because (at least in my mind) I was becoming too much.
I understand people don’t want to share the burdens of others; they have their own burdens to carry. But it still felt unfair.
This is not all—more things happened that led me, for the first time in my life, to feel beyond miserable. Majorly miserable, to quote my diagnosis.
Nothing mattered. I dissociate more often than not. I am completely not present. People around me try to cheer me up, only to be shut down by me saying, “Yeah, sorry, is it okay if we talk about that later?” Then I shut the door and get lost inside my head again.
The bright side?
People I could never imagine being there for me were.
People I thought would always have my back proved unreliable. They didn’t even send a single message.
“Hey, I heard you’re going through a rough period. If you wanna talk about it, I am here.”
That’s all I wanted.
The people I expected to say go f**k yourself instead… were always there.
Was it because of some personal motive? Perhaps.
But it still felt nice.
It felt like people cared for the first time—even if most of them cared out of personal motives.
While internally I am like this, apparently, I have some kind of charm.
I keep asking everyone why.
What is attractive about me? Why do you still want to hang out with me?
They all answer the same thing: “Because you are kind and sweet.”
Is that charm? Since when?
Good and kind people are always laughed at or taken advantage of in this world.
Kindness feels more like a curse than a virtue sometimes.
How is this a charm that somebody finds attractive?
It must be something else, I keep telling myself.
Some trick of the mind, some illusion people create because they want to see something that isn’t really there.
Besides, I don’t even believe I am kind and sweet.
Most days, I feel bitter. Exhausted.
I am stuck inside a body that moves and smiles on command but has nothing left to offer beneath the surface.
It’s like playing a role I never auditioned for. Yet if I don’t perform, I’ll lose everyone.
Why do people fall in love with me?
I am nobody.
Yet they do.
They project light where I only see cracks.
They see something lovable, something worth staying for, where I only see a hollowed-out version of what I used to be.
They fall in love with their idea of me, not the real me—the broken, detached, unreachable one.
And it hurts sometimes.
Because I want to be the person they see.
I want to believe them when they say I am kind, sweet, lovable.
But it’s like trying to hold onto smoke with bare hands.
They fall for the glimpses—the brief, fleeting moments when I manage to show some warmth before anxiety and sadness smother it out again.
And even if part of me feels guilty for not being the full version of what they deserve, another part of me aches to believe that maybe, just maybe, they’re not entirely wrong.
Maybe there is something still left in me.
Buried deep under the weight of everything I carry.
Or maybe they’re just chasing a ghost.
And when they express their feelings of love,
I am scared.
Me.
The same me who spent my entire life wishing for nothing more than someone to rely on.
A partner.
My other half.
Now, nobody fits the picture anymore.
Nobody feels right.
Even the ones who try the hardest, even the ones who genuinely care—I can’t let them in.
I am unable to trust people again.
It’s like a wire inside me snapped.
Every time someone says “I love you,” my heart doesn’t leap—it flinches.
I brace for impact without even realizing it.
Because I know how the loop goes.
It’s always the same cycle.
Like the song Tissues by Yungblud:
“You leave me like all the rest did
I’m in love again
And tomorrow I’ll be sad.”
That’s exactly it.
A vicious circle of opening up, feeling hope, only to be abandoned again.
Every confession of love feels less like a promise and more like a countdown to disappointment.
And I hate that I think like this now.
I hate that I’ve become so cynical.
But after enough wounds, you stop believing that hands reaching out for you won’t eventually let you fall.
After enough wounds, I became my mom.
She stopped believing in love. She always saw it as a transaction:
“Is there enough monetary value for me out there to pursue it?”
“I shouldn’t fall in love with that person; I have nothing to gain.”
That’s why she stayed with my dad for years.
For us, as she said.
Because she knew she couldn’t provide the future she dreamed of for us.
A future nobody ever asked for besides her.
It’s strange how people you once knew down to the smallest detail can become complete strangers.
People whose favorite songs you memorized, whose fears you whispered away at 2 a.m., whose heartbeat you knew better than your own.
Now, they’re just someone who exists somewhere else, carrying on a life that no longer includes you.
I used to think that when you know someone that intimately, when you’ve peeled back their layers and they’ve seen yours, there would always be a thread tying you together, even if you drifted apart.
But I was wrong.
The thread snaps.
And when it does, it’s like they take a piece of you with them—one you can’t get back, no matter how much you rebuild.
It’s bizarre, how easily familiarity becomes awkwardness.
How once-effortless conversations become heavy silences.
How someone who once felt like home becomes someone you don’t even know how to say “hello” to anymore.
How someone who once looked at you like you hung the stars now looks through you like you’re made of glass.
Maybe that’s what hurts the most—not the arguments, not the endings, not even the loneliness afterward.
It’s the becoming strangers part.
The knowledge that someone walked through the deepest rooms of your heart, left fingerprints on everything… and then simply moved on.
We are strangers again.
Not because we never knew each other.
But because we knew each other too much, too deeply, and still it didn’t work.
Maybe we were always meant to be passing seasons for each other—intense and unforgettable, but not permanent.
Maybe some people are just lessons dressed as soulmates.
Maybe loving someone doesn’t always mean you get to keep them.
And maybe…
just maybe…
one day I will be able to look you in the eyes again without crying shortly after.
So, dear self,
Good luck. You’re gonna need it.
Kind regards,
Zack
(Or the broken heart beneath the mask)
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