Ladies and gentlemen, gather round, tonight’s the big fight, a no-holds-barred spectacle, where the only rules are the ones we make inside our heads.
Look at me, cowering in the red corner, 210 pounds of flesh and fear— but that’s a lie, because when you count the weight of life’s problems, I’m crushed under a mountain, each issue a stone, a boulder on my chest.
And there, in the opposite corner, the challenger, a heavyweight I can’t shake off, weighing in at nights that stretch on forever, and moments that feel like drowning. It’s a darkness that knows my name, a shadow creeping from the corners of my mind, called Depression, ready to pin me down, ready to whisper that I’m not enough.
This is the fight we don’t choose, the one that plays out when the lights go dim, and the audience disappears, leaving me alone with my own fists and the echo of my doubts. Tonight, it’s just me, in this ring, against the weight of everything.
To those who say that suicide is for cowards, I say this:
They always ask me, “Any history of mental illness in the family?” Like it’s a checkbox. Like it’s a gene you can switch off if you marry someone with better coping skills.
No. Yes. I mean I’m not crying because I miss someone, I’m not heartbroken. I didn’t just lose my job or get dumped or forget to eat lunch. This isn’t a bad day. This is a brain thing. This is a chemical cocktail shaken not stirred, this is serotonin doing the Harlem Shake in my skull, this is don’t tell me to cheer up, this is I can’t help it, this is I would if I could but I can’t, so I’m stuck in this loop again.
It starts with a whisper. Not a voice. A twitch. A misplaced fear. It doesn’t knock. It intrudes. It doesn’t wait for an invitation—it is the host.
And it never gets easier with age. People think you grow out of this. No. You grow into it. You get better at faking. You get better at lying. You get better at saying, “I’m fine” with a noose around your ribcage.
It is biochemical. It is bed-bound. It is pushing away everyone who reaches for me, like don’t touch me, I’m radioactive, like you’ll burn if you get too close.
My brain whispers: You’re broken. And I believe it. It says: They can’t fix you. And I build a religion on that truth. I can’t see other perspectives because the lens is cracked. I carry my past like a haunted house that charges me rent to live inside my own head.
Welcome to the carnival. Step right up! Ride the panic coaster! One second I’m on top of the world, the next I’m six feet beneath it. Guess the weight of my emotional baggage— winner gets a lifetime of therapy bills and half a prescription.
This isn’t dramatic. This isn’t a cry for attention. It’s a cry for help. For hope. For something better than this.
I’ve read medication labels like they were ancient spells. Like maybe this time, the magic will work. Maybe this time I’ll teleport out of the darkness. Maybe this time I won’t need to explain that this isn’t weakness. This is survival. This is fight or flight, but I’ve been flying for years and I’m out of fuel.
You want to call me a coward?
No. Cowards don’t get out of bed when the world is a monster. Cowards don’t dance with danger without a harness, without a net, screaming into the void and daring it to scream back. Cowards don’t live every day fighting a voice that says: end it.
I am not a coward. I am a war zone. I am still here.
I wake up to you every morning; Plant a kiss on your forehead, Like a letter – a daily reminder That reads: “I’ve loved you, From the moment I first saw Your beautiful smile.” The smile That left me saying to a deity that I didn’t quite believe in, that You’d see… I would be someone You can believe in forever – until you Can no longer read my words.
