the room with no doors

some mornings i wake

and the world is already too heavy

before my feet even touch the floor.

the air feels thick

like it’s learned how to sit on my chest

and refuses to move

until i do

which i don’t.

i lie still

waiting for motivation

or meaning

or anything

but nothing comes.

nothing is loud here.

nothing has a pulse.

nothing is a full-body ache

and a dull gray hum

that makes even breathing feel optional.

people ask what’s wrong

and i want to say

everything

and nothing

and i don’t know

and i can’t tell

and i’m tired

and i’m drowning

and i’m numb

all at once.

because depression isn’t one thing

it’s all the things

stacked on top of each other

until i can’t tell where one ends

and the next begins.

grief sits in the corner

quiet

familiar and somehow distant

watching me, waiting

like it knows this room too.

anxiety paces

counting cracks in the floor

insisting i’m doing everything wrong

even when i’m not doing anything at all.

trauma hangs on the walls

like old photographs

that i don’t remember taking

but can’t take down

no matter how hard i try.

and me

i’m somewhere in the middle

blending into the rug

trying not to feel

because feeling hurts

and not feeling hurts

and existing hurts

and disappearing hurts too.

some days i swear i’m dissolving

slowly

quietly

like sugar dropped into water

losing shape

losing edges

losing the parts that used to taste like me.

i don’t want to get up.

and i don’t want to try.

and i don’t want to be alive

or dead

or anything in between.

i want to crawl into my bed

to sleep for a week

to mute the world

to mute myself

to stop holding everything

that no one can see.

this isn’t dramatic.

this isn’t tragic.

this is just

the heaviness of it all.

the weight of breath.

the drag of time.

the ache of nothing

and everything

and the endless, echoing space

between them.

i don’t have a lesson for this.

there’s no turning point or clean end.

no metaphor of light.

no slow unfurling of hope.

just this.

just today.

just the heaviness

that keeps arriving

even when i don’t want it

even when i can’t carry it

even when i’m too tired

to try.

and still

here i am

breathing somehow

under all this weight

in the thick of it

in the gray of it

in the everything

and the nothing

of it all.