"Not All Relapses Are About Heartbreaks — Sometimes, It’s About Missing the Happiest Version of Yourself"

There are relapses that have nothing to do with heartbreaks or people we failed to keep. Sometimes, the hardest relapse is missing the version of yourself that once felt whole. The version that once existed before the world became too loud, too heavy, too exhausting to survive in.

I hope that when my time finally comes, death will find me gently — in the most nostalgic way possible. The same way my mama used to carry me in her arms and sing me to sleep when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Because the truth is, I haven’t even lived my fullest life yet, and somehow, I’m already exhausted. There’s a kind of tiredness that sleep can no longer fix. A tiredness that settles quietly in your bones and follows you everywhere you go.

Every day, every year, as I grow older, I keep finding myself returning to the same memories. Mornings where my mama would wake up early just to make me breakfast before school. The way she would sit beside me whenever I got sick, making sure I was comfortable, checking my temperature every hour like nothing else in the world mattered more. She would wrap me in my favorite blanket, smooth my hair back, and feed me the warmest soup I had ever tasted. Back then, love was simple. It sounded like dishes clinking in the kitchen before sunrise. It smelled like freshly trimmed grass, newly painted chairs drying beneath the afternoon sun, and summer air filled with the sound of crickets singing outside the window. The sunlight used to touch my skin so softly that being alive felt effortless. Back then, existing didn’t feel this painful.

And then one day, without warning, everything changed.

Life suddenly became heavy, fast-paced, and unpredictable. It feels like being pulled into a black hole of emptiness, something slowly swallowing every good part of me piece by piece. What hurts the most is realizing that there were so many “last times” I never noticed while they were happening. The last time I played outside as a child without worrying about the future. The last time I kissed my mama goodbye before school. The last time forgotten homework felt like the biggest problem I had. The last time happiness came from the smallest things. The last time I was truly a child.

Nobody tells you when those moments are ending. They just disappear quietly while you’re too busy growing up to notice.

Now, all that seems left inside me are regrets, wrong choices, unanswered questions, anger, insecurities, and an endless pile of “what ifs.” At 28, people keep telling me that I’m still young, that life is only beginning, that so much can still happen for me. But what if it doesn’t? What if this is it? What if I’m already trapped in this endless cycle of trying to survive while everything around me slowly falls apart?

Sometimes it feels like I’m alive only in the physical sense. Breathing, waking up, existing — but not truly living. As if somewhere along the way, I lost myself while trying too hard to become who the world expected me to be. And no matter how far I go, no matter how much time passes, there’s still a part of me desperately trying to crawl back home to the little child who once believed life would always feel warm, safe, and full of wonder.