Two retrenchments in a single year. It sounds like a headline, something that happens to other people, but here I am — the one living it. Losing my job once broke me, but twice in the space of months feels like a cruel joke, like the world has decided to test how much I can carry before I shatter.
I keep trying to hold myself together, but my body tells the truth my mouth refuses to speak. My heart stumbles in its rhythm. My head pounds with a dull, relentless ache that feels like the only constant companion left to me. I booked myself into a clinic — not for peace, but for survival. My meds needed to be reset before I spiraled into a place I wouldn’t come back from.
The losses haven’t ended with work. Friends disappear too. Some drift away when you’re broke because you no longer fit into their world of dinners and laughter. Others are ripped from you by death, leaving holes you never saw coming. I live inside a shrinking circle, a little world where silence grows louder every day.
And I look around. Everyone else seems to have it right. People laugh in restaurants, families share pictures of their weekends, colleagues celebrate promotions online. They carry on while I battle to breathe under the weight of a soul that won’t stop aching. The pain in me doesn’t ease with time; it feeds on itself. It whispers of an exit, of a way out, and I wish that voice would go quiet. I wish I didn’t have to fight it every morning when my eyes open to another day I didn’t ask for.
This is my reality right now. Not polished. Not dressed up for the world to accept. Just raw a man standing in the ruins of what once was, searching for the faintest sign of light.