Fuck, I want to die.
The thought hits me at least once or twice a day. It isn't even dramatic anymore, not some gut-wrenching cry for help. It's just... routine. A quiet, almost mundane whisper that rises up while I'm waiting for the bus or folding laundry. As ordinary as brushing my teeth. As casual as checking my phone. Just a simple, unremarkable thought: I want to die.
I don't even remember when it started feeling so normal. Maybe it was always there, faint and distant, drowned out by the noise of everyday life. But now it's loud. Dominant. A hum in the background that never quite fades.
Maybe it's because my life feels... suffocating.
Yeah. That fits.
It's not a grand tragedy. It's not some epic, cinematic spiral into despair. It's tighter than that. Smaller. Like trying to breathe in a windowless room, the air stale and thick, growing heavier with every passing second. And the worst part is, I don't even know who I'm suffocating for anymore.
I wasn't always like this. I used to be a cheerful kid. Bright. Loud. I was good at school, decent at sports—the kind of boy everyone liked. Our family wasn't rich, just simple and happy: my father, my mother, my little brother, and me. We didn't have much, but we had each other. And that was enough.
But one day, everything changed. It was just an average day… until it wasn't.
I remember it clearly. The air felt normal one moment—and then it didn't. The walls seemed to close in, the room growing smaller with each breath.
My father was on the sofa, laughing at something on TV. That deep, hearty laugh that used to fill our home.
And then… it stopped.
Cut off. Like someone had yanked the plug from the world.
The silence that followed was heavier than any noise. My mother and I were in the next room, and we froze. Something felt wrong—instinctively, painfully wrong.
We rushed in to find him collapsed on the floor, his face pale and twisted with pain.
"Dad! Dad, what's wrong?!"
My little brother's voice cracked in panic. Mine and my mother's were no better—just echoes of helplessness.
Eventually, he came to, waving us off. Said he was fine. "Just a little dizzy," though the voice that left his lips didn't sound like his own anymore.
We took him to the hospital anyway.
The city hospital was cold and sterile, its walls too white, its lights too bright. We waited for hours, anxiety grinding us down like sandpaper. Tests were run. Results came back. They didn't bring answers.
They brought a storm.
Lung cancer. Stage three.
The doctor's words were soft, professional. But they felt like thunder, leaving us stunned, breathless.
"Due to long-term exposure to carcinogenic materials..."
My father had worked for years as a disposal assistant in a chemical lab. He was proud of that job. He believed in honest work. But because of a missing filter, faulty gear—maybe just someone's negligence—he'd been breathing in poison.
Silent damage. The kind that builds slowly. The kind you never see coming.
And now, there he was. Fragile. Frail. Chained to machines we couldn't afford.
We tried to fight back. Filed a case. Talked to lawyers. Filled out endless paperwork. But the world doesn't bend for people like us. The system wasn't made for families with trembling hands and hopeful hearts.
They had power. We had nothing but hope. And hope lost.
Insurance covered scraps. The rest fell on us. A housewife, a student, and a little boy who didn't understand why no one laughed anymore.
So my mother got a job.
Her first. A black company. Long hours. No benefits. The kind of place that squeezes people until they break. She came home late, her steps slow, her eyes hollow. But she endured. Just to keep the lights on. Just to keep food on the table.
She still smiled.
That was what broke me the most.
Her smile wasn't warm anymore. It was brittle. A mask made of quiet desperation and fierce, unwavering love. A smile that never reached her eyes. And it made me feel like I was drowning.
So I made a choice.
After high school, I didn't go to college. I didn't tell her. I packed a bag like everyone else and left for a job.
Convenience store. Restaurant. Vending supplier. I kept switching, chasing pay, pretending I had a future I wasn't building. I lied to her. Said I was studying. But the pay stubs gave me away. So did the exhaustion.
That lie didn't last. The crumpled pay stubs, the scent of the restaurant on my clothes, the way I came home with tired eyes and sore feet—she eventually put the pieces together.
The argument that followed was a storm I can still feel. She snapped. All the pressure, the frustration, the pain—it came pouring out in a torrent of furious, heartbroken words. Her voice, usually so quiet and gentle, was a raw, shaking thing I barely recognized.
"Why the hell are you doing this job?!" she screamed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Why are you working for those godless people when I'm breaking myself just so you and your brother can have a future?! Why are you throwing away everything?! I didn't ask you to! Neither did your father! So why?!"
I had no answer.
No excuse.
Just a quiet silence that filled the space between us. I couldn't explain that I couldn't stand to see her so tired. I couldn't tell her that the weight of the debt was suffocating me, too. I couldn't explain that I just wanted to help.
Instead, I just stood there, my throat tight with unspoken words, and placed a wad of crumpled bills on the table in front of her.
Then I walked away.
That money helped—a little. It was just a drop in the ocean of debt, but it was all I had. But something broke that night. Something precious. The silence that followed the argument was colder, heavier, more final than any I had ever known.
My mother stopped speaking to me. My little brother, a sweet and innocent child, started keeping his distance, as if he knew I was the cause of the new tension in the house.
And for the first time, the house didn't feel like home anymore.
The days went on like that. A suffocating routine of silence and distance. At first, I told myself it would pass. That this was just a phase—that tempers would cool, and everything would go back to normal. But days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. And the silence never left.
It started to hurt. Not in a loud, explosive way. No. It was quiet. Slow. Suffocating. Like something was crawling beneath my skin, peeling me apart one layer at a time—flesh, bone, soul. The distance never closed. The anger never faded.
It's not like I didn't try. I tried to mend it. I tried to apologize. To make things right.
But every effort hit a wall. It was like they didn't want to hear me. Like I'd broken something beyond repair.
And I kept asking myself—what did I even do that was so wrong? Was helping out… a crime? Was I so hateful for making a silent decision to support the family? Did that one choice really destroy everything we'd built over the years?
But those questions never found space to be asked. And even if they had, I doubt the answers would've come.
So I buried myself in work. I increased my hours. Took double shifts. Triple shifts. I started coming home less and less, until I was basically living outside the house. A ghost with a name and a paycheck. I became a workaholic—not out of ambition, not out of pride… but just to breathe. Just to get out of that house that no longer felt like home. Just to escape the silence that clawed at my throat every time I stepped inside.
Time stopped feeling like a flow—it became a burden. Something I begged to just pass. Please… just move. Just end.
The only comfort I found was on the rooftop, alone. Just me, a cigarette burning down to its filter, and the silence. I don't even remember when I started smoking. Or when I stopped recognizing the person I used to be, the person who didn't feel like a phantom in his own life.
But that thought was cut short.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, a harsh, electric sting. I checked the screen—Mom. For a moment, my chest tightened with a fragile, almost-forgotten hope.
Maybe… maybe things were finally softening. Maybe she was calling to talk.
I picked up, my fingers clumsy.
But the voice on the other end wasn't the one I'd grown up hearing. It wasn't calm. It wasn't warm. It was a jagged, broken thing, cracked and trembling and raw with an agony that tore through the phone line. Like someone who had cried too much to keep crying… but still did anyway.
"He's gone," she whispered, her voice a fragile, broken thing. "Your father... he's gone."
Before I knew it, I was running.
No plan. No direction. Just a primal, desperate need to move. I ran through streets. Past cars. Against red lights. The world was a blur, a chaotic mess of headlights and honking horns and shouting voices, but all I could hear was the frantic pounding of my own heart in my ears. The cold winter air bit at my face, but I didn't feel it. I was a single-minded missile aimed straight at the hospital.
By the time I reached it, my body was a wreck. My clothes were soaked in sweat, my lungs burned with every ragged breath, and my legs felt like they were barely holding me up. But I didn't stop. Not even to breathe. I burst through the automatic doors, the sudden rush of warm, antiseptic air hitting me like a physical blow. The smells of disinfectant and old coffee hung thick in the air, a scent that will forever be etched in my memory.
And then I saw her.
My mother.
But not the mother I remembered. The woman standing in the middle of that sterile, unforgiving hallway was a stranger. All the grace she once carried, the quiet strength that had defined her, was gone. The warmth in her expression, the knowing smile that could calm any storm, was shattered, replaced by a vacant, desperate grief. Her eyes were swollen red, her cheeks streaked with dried tears. But when she saw me… they started again. She ran into my arms and hugged me, clinging to me with a strength I didn't know she had.
It was the first time she'd touched me in what felt like forever.
But there was no warmth in her embrace. Only a cold, trembling body… shaking not from the winter air, but from the unbearable grief she could no longer carry alone. The only warmth I felt was from her tears—soaking into my shoulder, one after another, like raindrops that would never stop.
I held her for a long time, the world outside our embrace fading into a meaningless blur. It wasn't until a doctor, his face kind but tired, came over that she finally pulled away, her hand still clinging to mine. He led us to a small, private room, the door clicking softly behind us.
The room was quiet. Too quiet. My father was there, lying still on a bed, a thin blanket pulled up to his chin. He looked so peaceful, so calm, as if he had simply fallen asleep and was waiting for us to wake him. But I knew the truth.
That night... on a cold winter evening... My father left this world. Quietly. Without a goodbye. Without waiting for any of us. He simply... went.
The silence of that room was different from the silence on the rooftop. That silence had been a comfort, a space to hide from the world. This silence was an emptiness, a chasm that had opened up in our lives, a space where his booming laugh, his gentle teasing, his quiet advice should have been. This silence was the first breath of a new, colder world.
I didn't cry. My mother was the one who was breaking, and I found myself in the unfamiliar role of her anchor. I held her hand, I murmured empty comforts, I just... existed. My grief, so vast and all-encompassing, was a silent thing. It wasn't a roaring fire; it was an ache, a dull, perpetual pain that had settled deep in my bones. It was a cold that had nothing to do with the winter air. It was a cold that would never leave.
We stayed in that room for hours, just the two of us, a family of three now, trying to make sense of a world that had changed in an instant. The last time I had felt so helpless was years ago, when I was a child and my father had held me tight against the boogeyman in my closet.
Now, the boogeyman was real, and it had taken him. And this time, there was no one to hold me.