I have learned how convincingly a person can lie when it comes to their own survival.

It is not the big lies that are dangerous, but the small, quiet sentences we repeat every day until, eventually, they begin to feel real.

„I’m fine“ is my favorite sentence. I’ve said it so many times that even the people who knew me stopped asking. And yet, something inside me had already broken long ago.

There were nights when I lay motionless, fighting thoughts heavier than any exhaustion. My heart was racing, my mind was clouded with fog, and every morning felt like a punishment rather than a fresh start.

Doctors searched for problems in my blood, my pulse, in all kinds of charts and graphs on paper, but they found nothing. How do you explain that it isn’t the body that is sick, but something much deeper?

So I kept smiling.
Because it was easier than speaking the truth.

Over time, I began to believe that some people simply aren’t meant to be happy. That love is something other people happen to find, while you can only stand on the sidelines and watch.

I moved through conversations like a ghost wandering through unfamiliar rooms — present, but never truly part of anything.

And yet, there were rare moments.

People who could hear the silence between my words. Who noticed that behind my anger was actually exhaustion. Behind my sarcasm, fear. Behind my silence, a quiet cry for help.

You don’t recognize such people immediately. They don’t force their way into your life. But when they appear, you should hold on to them. Because sometimes, all it takes is one person who truly sees you to remind you, if only for a moment, that you still exist.

I have often tried to fit into this world. I bent myself out of shape, adapted, stayed silent, and kept functioning. But eventually, even breathing becomes difficult when you spend too long pretending to be someone you no longer are.

Then you find yourself sitting alone at night, surrounded by empty thoughts and words that will never be spoken aloud.

The most dangerous thing about darkness is not that it is quiet. It is that, at some point, it begins to feel familiar. And perhaps that is exactly why nobody noticed how close I sometimes came to simply letting go. Not out of hatred for life, but out of exhaustion.

But somewhere, deep beneath it all, there was always this small, defiant wish to be understood. Not saved. Not pitied. Just seen.

Some people don’t die suddenly.

Some disappear slowly, sentence by sentence, behind a simple:

„I’m fine.“

1

Like