1.》DN

The Beginning of the Fall

People always ask when everything changed.

I wish I knew.

If I had a date, a place, or a single moment to blame, maybe it would all make sense. Maybe I could point at it and say, there... that's where I disappeared.

But the truth is much crueler.

No one notices when they're falling.

At first, it feels like nothing. You wake up a little more tired than yesterday. You smile because everyone expects you to. You laugh at jokes that aren't funny. You tell people you're fine because saying anything else feels exhausting.

Then the days become heavier.

The nights become longer.

Silence becomes your favorite place.

I don't remember the last time I felt genuinely happy. I remember pretending. I remember becoming so good at pretending that even I started believing it.

There was a time when I loved the rain.

Now it only reminds me of how easy it is for the world to hide tears.

Everyone saw the same girl.

The girl with decent grades.

The quiet friend.

The daughter who never caused problems.

The girl who always said, "I'm okay."

No one saw the cracks.

No one heard the screaming inside my head.

Maybe they couldn't.

Maybe I never let them.

Every morning followed the same routine. My alarm rang, I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, and I tried to convince myself that getting out of bed mattered. Some mornings I won that argument. Other mornings, I only moved because staying still felt just as painful.

I brushed my hair.

I got dressed.

I packed my backpack.

I looked into the mirror.

The girl staring back at me always looked normal. That was the frightening part. There were no bruises. No scars that people could point at. Nothing that warned the world that something inside me was slowly breaking apart.

I practiced my smile until it looked believable.

By the time I walked out the front door, I had already become someone else.

School was loud.

Hallways echoed with conversations, laughter, and plans for the weekend. People complained about homework, talked about parties, and argued over things that seemed so important to them.

I listened.

Sometimes I even joined the conversation.

But I always felt like I was standing behind a glass wall, watching everyone else's lives continue while mine stood perfectly still.

It wasn't loneliness.

At least, not the kind people talk about.

I was surrounded by faces every day.

Yet I had never felt more invisible.

The strange thing about darkness is that it doesn't arrive all at once. It waits. It grows quietly in the corners of your mind until one day you look around and realize you've forgotten what light felt like.

It steals little things first.

Your excitement.

Your curiosity.

Your laughter.

Then it takes your energy.

Your hope.

Your dreams.

And somehow, you don't notice the theft until there's almost nothing left.

Some nights I lay awake wondering if everyone else felt this empty and simply hid it better than I did.

Maybe growing up was supposed to feel like this.

Maybe everyone carried an invisible weight they never talked about.

Or maybe...

Maybe something inside me had gone wrong a long time ago.

I wanted someone to notice.

I wanted someone to ask me a question I couldn't answer with, "I'm fine."

But every time someone looked at me, I smiled before they had the chance.

It became automatic.

A reflex.

A shield.

After a while, even I couldn't remember what my real face looked like.

That's where my story begins.

Not with a tragedy.

Not with a broken heart.

Not with a single mistake.

It begins with something much smaller.

A feeling.

A whisper.

A tiny voice inside me that kept asking...

"What if tomorrow feels exactly like today?"

I never answered it.

Instead, I kept walking.

Step after step.

Without realizing I was already standing at the edge of an abyss.

And the worst part was this:

I still believed I could stop falling whenever I wanted.

I had no idea that the abyss had already become home.

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