I stopped eating.
I stopped sleeping.
The days blurred into each other, endless gray smears across the walls of my apartment. I didn't even recognize the man staring back at me from the mirror—sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, a face that carried the weight of ten lifetimes of regret.
Everywhere I looked, reminders of her lingered. The bed where she once whispered love into my ear now stank of betrayal. The kitchen where we laughed over burnt dinners was cold and silent. Even the smell of her perfume, faint in the air, felt like poison choking me.
The creditors didn't stop. Their voices filled the phone, filled my dreams, filled my every waking hour until silence itself became unbearable. Sometimes I thought I heard them even when the phone wasn't ringing—shadows at the door, whispers in the walls.
I started drinking. At first, just to numb it. Then to forget. Then, because sobriety was a worse kind of hell. The bottles piled up around me, glass graves marking the death of my will.
My body trembled. My thoughts twisted. And the truth carved itself deeper every day: I had nothing left. No money. No love. No dignity. Not even myself.
There comes a point when pain stops being pain and becomes something else. Something heavier. Something that drags you to the floor and dares you to stand again. I couldn't. I didn't want to.
So I decided.
The building.
The rooftop.
The end.
For the first time in weeks, my heart felt calm.