Crumbs of Happiness

Sometimes, I just want to be erased. The words I’ve spoken, the warmth I’ve left on my chair, the fingerprints on my coffee cup. I want to disappear like a speck of dust in some forgotten corner and become the joy of the gleaming surface left behind. What wouldn’t I give for a world where my erasure is seen not as sorrow, but as relief? Living is hard. And I think I am someone too powerless to endure this arduous journey. In a mind built upon failures, I can’t even reach the crumbs of happiness. I watch, envious, as the people who care for me envision my imagined rise. I just want to vanish—in an instant, in a fleeting second, in a breath.

In my dreams, I am met with cries of people calling out to me. I run from them, trying to hide in a corner, but my hopeful waiting is always shattered when they find me in my solitude. I kneel before them, begging for them to let me go. Even before the day begins, I see my own helplessness within the dreams that drain my hope. Tears stream from my eyes as I mourn a life I have failed to live. I grieve the emptiness at the center of the applause meant for me. I grieve the nothingness left of my lost youth. I grieve the disappointment etched on the faces of those I had only just begun to feel close to.

They ask me why I feel the need to disappear, yet they never look into my eyes. They do not see the void where I once existed. They do not know the pain of being unheard. They do not hear the echo of my footsteps filling my room. They do not know that in my mind, I am running, screaming, tearing through thoughts in desperate chaos. They do not know that no matter how hard I try, I cannot become just anyone. They do not know that I would give everything to simply be one of them. They only call out, they only cheer, they only elevate me—yet they do not know that I am still just me…