and suddenly, I’m sitting on the floor of my bathroom again. the scene that is playing is all too familiar. fresh tears are blurring my vision. my heart is racing, trying to break out of its cage, somehow my mind is racing faster.

and then suddenly, all the thoughts converge into one.

shaking my head, only one thought rises above the buzzing in my brain, “life is not supposed to be like this, this isn’t normal”. but that’s my reality. my life is like this.

you don’t ever think that life could turn into this —whatever this is — until it does. until you’re fifteen , or sixteen , and everything feels too loud and too quiet at the same time. until your safe place becomes a locked bathroom door and a thought you keep having: this can’t be what growing up is supposed to feel like.

and it hits me sometimes how much time I’m losing. like I’m watching my own life from underwater.

this should be the part where i’m living, right?

laughing too loud in public, making mistakes, falling in and out of love

but instead I’m here, sitting in this same bathroom, on the same floor, over and over again. watching the years fold in on themselves, like I’m pressing pause on the life I’m supposed to be living.

trying to survive what no one even knows is happening.

and it happens so often that I forget this isn’t everyone’s life. I forget that outside of this bathroom, life is normal.

people are going to concerts and laughing at stupid things and taking blurry photos with their friends.

people are falling in love.

people are living.

and sometimes, it feels like I’m the only one stuck in this in-between place — not moving forward, not really present, just surviving moments that keep repeating themselves.

if this isn’t normal, then why does it feel so permanent?

and if everyone else is living a normal life… why does mine look like this?

what even is normal, when you grow up around things that warp it?

but maybe the scariest part is how easy it is to get used to it. to forget this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. to wake up, go through the motions, sit on this floor again, and call it life.

you stop questioning the heaviness.

you stop expecting anything else.

but sometimes, something in me fights it.

some quiet voice still whispers, “this isn’t what life is meant to feel like”

i think, this isn’t normal. this isn’t the way normal people live.

but what’s normal anyways?