everyone just forgot about me. i spend my time alone—my time with myself. and it is terrifying, it actually is. my self haunting me. the thoughts skitter across my skin like spiders. memories press against my ribcage until breathing becomes shallow and forced.

i rethink my childhood over and over. like a broken record. it never stopped playing. just aged, and with age, it ruined. and so did i.

they resurface all at once, when i am alone. when i am with no one. not even with me. i catch myself, almost obsessively, scrolling through old childhood photos, asking my siblings, “do you remember when...?” and the sadness that i’m usually the only one who remembers—or the only one who still cares about what once was—lingers heavy under my sternum.

i’m living in the past while my body moves toward the future. i don’t really care about the now. about this instant. i’m constantly escaping escaping escaping. this moment, this reality, these difficulties. just because i want to go back. back to when life was easier.

when life was just... life.

when every day was the same, but also new. when i argued with my siblings over stupid things. and even that was better than barely speaking at all.

cursed to be alone forever. cursed to never have experienced any first worth remembering.

never never never.

i’m the one who watched them leave the house. i’m the one who expects them to drift further. i’m the one who starts the conversation the one who asks about their days. the one who worries if they’re truly happy. and still — they’re leaving.

the absence of these moments has created a hollow space within me that expands with every passing year.

i am desperate to be remembered in someone’s story, that’s why i cling so tightly to the memories, to those blurry pictures still saved on my phone, to the moments that somehow still project behind my eyelids.

but i’m the only one watching the movie. and it’s a flop.

i’m not even my own main character. i’m just a stranger, passing through scenes that should feel familiar but don’t. experiencing my own life.

then again, i don’t even know me.

i know. i know everyone has their own life. i know. i just... i just wish maybe they didn’t already know how to live without me. because i don’t.

they all have their own lives. they do. they have different people to speak to, a different person to spend their time with. their days filled with conversations and connections that seem to happen effortlessly, while mine remain empty, echoing.

there’s this one memory i can’t shake. we were in the mountains with our grandparents. my siblings stayed longer with them to take ski lessons. i left early with our parents, and on the way home, i cried. i cried because they weren’t with me. and it hit me. the fact that we wouldn’t always be together. there were no phones then. no video calls. just absence. and silence.

we’re all struggling in our twenties. maybe i’m just the only one who says it out loud. maybe that’s my strength, feeling too much, expressing too much. but from where i stand, it feels like they’ve figured things out. i know they have their own problems, but they always seem to find solutions. i don’t.

i’m constantly unhappy. no one asks. no one cares. but maybe i’m the problem. maybe i’m not open to being spoken to. very likely.

i used to be so sure of who i was. so determined. now i don’t feel my age. i feel like that same child in the backseat, making faces at the camera. the one who cried the whole ride home.

i’ve built walls so high that even i can’t see over them anymore, forgetting that walls don’t just keep others out. they also lock me in.

i’ve been crying a lot lately. nostalgia hits harder in the summer. maybe because those were the best months, when we spent whole days together, when we laughed the most.

and i don’t know myself. i’m just waiting for another lonely summer, doing nothing, waiting, and losing all my days in my room, doing absolutely nothing at all. time passes. seasons change. i remain static, frozen in amber while the world continues spinning around me.

it’s actually insane how fast time flies. i feel 17 inside, but somehow i’m 24. seven years gone, just like that. and in seven more, i’ll be 31. it doesn’t even feel real. it’s like i blinked and time sprinted ahead without me.

i keep trying to catch up. to be present, to hold onto the moment, to appreciate what i have. but my mind keeps wandering. backward, to simpler days. forward, to an imagined peace that never quite arrives. i’m caught in between, always reaching, never arriving.

i know i’ll miss this era. i can already feel the future nostalgia tugging at me. i can picture my older self—maybe 50, maybe older—thinking about now, aching for just one more night at 24. just one.

so i try to enjoy it. for her. for future me. but the now is loud and chaotic and sometimes painfully dull. and it’s hard—hard to be grateful when life keeps getting in the way. hard to stay present when the present doesn’t always feel like enough.

i look at photos from our teenage years, and i don’t recognize the people in them. and now we’re all in our twenties, and it feels weird to ask deep questions, to really try to know them. they laugh it off, call me dramatic or intense.

i’ve never been good at small talk. but i need them first if i want to get to know people. the irony doesn’t escape me: the thing i despise is the very key to what i desperately want.

the world goes on. the people move on. and i’m stuck. stuck in this life i didn’t want, trapped in a present i never imagined for myself.

and it’s not even sadness anymore. it’s quieter than that. stranger than that.

it’s like something’s missing, but i can’t even name what. like a piece of me fell out somewhere along the way, and i didn’t notice until i felt the emptiness it left behind.

is just… hollow. a stillness that settles deep and doesn’t budge.

i wake up exhausted, like i’ve already lived the whole day in my head. everything feels like too much, and at the same time, nothing gets through to me.

i keep functioning, but i don’t feel like i’m living. i laugh, i talk, i show up. but it’s like observing myself from a distance, as if watching someone else’s story playing on a screen i can’t turn off.

i don’t even know what i’m waiting for anymore. only that something inside me has gone quiet. and i’m scared it won’t come back.

i don’t know. i just wish i could turn back time and understand everyone better.

maybe. maybe i need to understand myself first. because honestly? i don’t know who i am.

each attempt at reinvention collapsing under its own weight. each new beginning ending before it truly starts.

i don’t know who i am without my family. and sometimes i feel like they’d be just fine without me.

but i can’t say the same.

and i just fall down the steps. i’m rolling down the steps. hurting with every fall. sometimes i get up, and try my ascent again.

but i just fall harder then. the higher i climb, the farther i have to fall. the cycle continues, unbroken.

while i break irremediably further each time.

crack.