Suffocating Walls

the sense of being half-alive

Maybe I was only miserable because I stopped engaging with what I loved and tried filling the void with what I wished I loved.

There is a difference.

The things I love pull at me without permission. They tap on the glass of my mind when I am supposed to be serious. They distract me when I am trying to be practical. They ask questions that don’t lead anywhere useful. They sit with me in the middle of the night and refuse to leave.

The things I wish I loved are more polite.

They look impressive from far away. People nod approvingly when you say their names.

But they do not speak to me.

So I tried to build a life out of them anyway.

Stacking them carefully, like empty boxes, hoping the structure would feel like a home if I arranged it neatly enough.

It didn’t.

Instead, there was this dull, quiet hunger. It aches, and it lingers in the background of my everyday. A sense that I was slightly out of place inside my own life, like wearing someone else’s coat that almost fits but never quite settles on the shoulders.

And maybe the misery was simply the absence of the small, strange things that used to keep me company.

The soft chaos of loving something for no good reason.

Maybe nothing is wrong with the world.

Maybe I just stopped answering the door when the things I loved came looking for me.

I would push myself out of my numb, tiny hole and see if I surprise myself by having some fun.

Sometimes I wonder if I am living half-alive. Not dead, not fully here either. Just moving through the days like someone walking underwater, every step slower than it should be.

I keep thinking maybe the feeling will lift if I just step outside of it. If I go somewhere and do something, let the world bump into me a little. Maybe I will laugh unexpectedly. Maybe something small will catch my attention and pull me back into myself again.

Or maybe nothing will happen.

I don’t know which possibility is more exhausting.

It is strange to be this tired without having done anything that should make a person tired. This fatigue lingers in my bones, in my mind, in the quiet moments between my thoughts.

Still, there is a small, stubborn part of me that wants to try. I am not exactly hopeful, but the idea of staying here forever—in this dim, numb little corner of mine—feels heavier than the effort of stepping out of it.

So maybe I will go.

Maybe I will move.

Maybe I will surprise myself.

And I am going to go out and do something.

Because this isn’t my room anymore.

It has quietly turned into a prison.

The walls are the same, the window is the same, the air hasn’t changed. But something about the way I sit inside it has hardened. The hours gather here like dust. My thoughts circle the same tired corners. Even silence has started to feel heavy.

And the worst part is that no one locked the door.

It is I.

The habits, the hesitation, the strange comfort of staying still even when stillness begins to suffocate. I built the bars slowly, without noticing. One quiet day at a time.

But a prison only works if you keep agreeing to stay.

So I will stand up. I will open the door that was never actually closed. I will step outside and let the world feel unfamiliar again—the cold air, the noise, the small unpredictable things that happen when you are not hiding.

Maybe nothing remarkable will happen.

But at least the sky will be bigger than these four walls.

At least the day will not end in the exact same place it began.

And maybe that is how a prison stops being a prison.

You leave.