I can’t fight what’s in my head.
I’ve tried. Every day.
And every day it wins, quietly, with a whisper that burrows under my skin like rot.
The voice isn’t loud anymore. It doesn’t scream.
It just knows exactly where to cut.
And I let it. Because I don’t know how not to.
It tells me I’m a failure at work.
That I’m just playing at being competent. That they’ll figure me out soon.
That when they talk behind closed doors, they’re talking about me.
That I’m only one mistake away from being nothing again.
I open emails like I’m waiting for an execution notice.
I reread my sentences ten times before I send them—then reread them twenty more after, convinced I’ve ruined something.
I sit at my desk pretending to work, when really I’m just managing the panic.
I smile. I nod. I die slowly behind my eyes.
But worse than that?
Being a mum with this mind.
I don’t just fear failure—I expect it.
I live in constant dread that she’ll see through me.
That one day she’ll look at me and feel the disappointment I already live with.
I love her so much it burns.
And still, I think:
“I’m the reason she’ll need therapy.”
“She deserves a mum who doesn’t cry in the bathroom.”
“She deserves someone who isn’t haunted.”
She tells me I’m the best. She writes me notes. She hugs me like I’m her whole world.
And I try to believe it.
But the voice says, “It’s just because she doesn’t know any better yet.”
And Joel.
God, Joel.
He tells me I’m beautiful. He calls me his girl. He says he wants a future, a life, a home.
And I nod and smile and say “me too”—
while my mind hisses,
“Wait until he sees how deep it goes.
Wait until he realises what you really are.
Wait until he gets tired of the weight.
The scars. The loops.
The lies you tell just to seem okay.”
He could have anyone. Anyone.
And he picked me.
And I’m terrified every day that I’m just a placeholder for someone better who hasn’t arrived yet.
He says he loves me.
And I believe him.
But I don’t believe I’m worth it.
This isn’t dramatic.
This isn’t hormones.
This is mental pain so loud it drowns out joy.
So constant that even silence feels like screaming.
So heavy I feel it in my bones.
It doesn’t leave bruises.
It doesn’t bleed.
But it’s killing me. Slowly. Invisibly.
And I’m so tired of surviving it in secret.
I check my emails obsessively.
I lie awake preparing for a disaster that never comes—but feels so close it’s real.
I imagine losing everything. Daily.
I run through what I’d do if Joel left. If Tilly stopped loving me.
If work let me go.
If no one showed up next time I broke down.
I don’t want to die.
I just want this pain to stop.
I want to live without feeling like I have to earn the right to exist.
I want a brain that’s quiet.
A heart that doesn’t shake.
A life that isn’t a battlefield.
But mostly—I want to stop hating myself for still being in it.