She feels loneliness, not the usual kind, but the kind that consumes everything. Thick, like fog, soaking into her bones and making everything inside go cold.
It’s not just a wave of sadness, not just a passing mood… It’s something deeper.
Something that slowly drains her strength each day.
Still, again and again, she reaches out.
She writes. She waits. She hopes.
Tries to show: “You’re not alone. I’m here. I’m with you.”
But in return silence. Emptiness. And it keeps growing. Heavier. Denser.
The silence doesn’t end. It spreads.
Like a vacuum pulling the air from her chest.
No words. No gestures.
Just the feeling that her warmth is being swallowed by the quiet.
When we feel unwanted - we try to be useful to others.
When we need support the most - we give all of ours away.
And in the end… we’re left in the emptiness.
Left drained.
Left on our own.
Empty.
Bright light. Warm tones. A small apartment, modest but deeply comforting.
She woke up suddenly. The headache felt like an explosion inside her skull, dull but consuming.
Her eyes refused to open, weighed down with heat and pressure, as if something was burning behind the lids.
Slowly, she rose and walked toward the mirror. Not out of fear, but out of necessity. She needed to see who she had woken up as today. But looking at herself was a struggle. Her eyes stung, resisting her effort to see.
And then she froze.
Half of the whites of her eyes were drenched in crimson.
Not tiny spots, not veins.
It looked like someone had spilled red point across them, so deep, heavy, pooling in the sclera.
Her irises had turned dark burgundy, almost beautiful in a terrible, surreal way.
Red tears streamed from her eyes. Were they even tears? she wondered. Her mouth was filled with the sharp tang of iron.
Her first thought: “A blood vessel must’ve burst in my brain… At least the headache makes sense now.”
Strange, how even in the midst of something so haunting, she still searched for positiveness, for something to hold onto. A fragment of reason to shield herself from the shock.
Then came the pull.
Wake up.
And she did.