Dear World,

I’m exhausted. I can’t keep doing this.

I’m trying to be the girl you need me to be—the happy sister, the daughter you can boast about, the cousin you admire, the friend you can always turn to. But it’s all crumbling down. The walls are closing in, and the floor shatters beneath each step I take.

I feel weak. I feel numb. I feel empty.

Every hurdle drains another drop from my lifeline, and I don’t know if I have enough left to keep standing. I try to explain my pain, hoping you might help me, understand me, or even sympathize with me. But no. Instead, you mock me. You tell me to deal with it, to dust myself off, to keep going—as if my suffering is just an inconvenience to you.

I have given him my all. I have given up the person that I am for him. I have given up my bonds, my roots, my connections—just to keep him afloat. I have taken care of him from the moment I laid eyes on him because I knew he was my treasure. I knew he was worthy of so much more in this life.

I showed him the beauty of the world. I showed him how incredible it is to be alive.

Yet now, I am nothing. I am invisible. And no one seems to grasp why that has shattered me. No one sees how I poured my heart and soul into loving and nurturing him. I made sure the world saw only the best in him. And in the end, that kindness has come back to haunt me.

Because now, everyone treats me like I’ve lost my mind for ever wanting to walk away from the best thing that ever happened to me.

When they can’t open their eyes and realize…

I am what happened to him.

I am trying to hold on to the one person I love most in this world, but he isn’t growing with me. As I fight to shatter these walls and climb out of the pit I’ve fallen into, he sinks deeper. I reach for him, trying to bring him with me, but he is nowhere near.

I tell you that having him around is draining me, that his sorrow is suffocating me, that his weight is pulling me under. And yet, all you say is, That’s how it’s meant to be. You are meant to save him.

But the moment I decide to save myself?
The moment I put my foot down?
Suddenly, I am the enemy.
I am a tyrant.
I am the monster.

When I am sick, when I am weak, when I collapse because I cannot keep going, I find myself alone. And yet, he—he is the one surrounded by love, by compassion, by endless care.

Weren’t you, dear World, the one who brought me here? The one who was supposed to love me, to protect me, to see me?

Then why do you shed tears for him while casting me aside, as if my suffering does not exist?

It’s crazy to think that they try to convince me that because you were there while I was at the brink of life, that somehow means I owe it to you to stay by your side. That somehow, that means everything else should mean nothing. That everything else should seem like minor issues that will simply resolve themselves.

But truly.

Am I misunderstood?

Should I really feel misunderstood?

But maybe the truth isn’t that I am misunderstood. Maybe the truth is… you never wanted to understand me at all.

Because truly, these opinions are coming from places that lack so much knowledge and depth.