How to extinguish a Soul

How to extinguish a Soul

There was a time when my father’s laughter echoed through the house, filling every corner with warmth. He was the kind of man who cared for others more than himself. His heart, once so full of life, began to wear thin like old paper. It wasn’t an illness you could see—no cough, no fever—just a quiet descent into the kind of loneliness no one understood. And that was the hardest part: no one understood.

The world around him seemed to shift, and where once people greeted him with smiles, now they offered only whispers. The gossip began slowly, like a small spark flickering in the shadows, but it spread fast. They talked about his moods, speculated about his silences. Some even created stories, ugly fabrications that twisted the truth beyond recognition. They labeled him in ways no one should ever be labeled. A man with demons, a failure, someone to pity. But pity wasn’t what he needed—he needed someone to listen, to see him for who he still was.

Day by day, my father’s spirit grew quieter. I watched as the whispers wrapped around him like chains, dragging him down further into a darkness he couldn’t escape. He tried to fight it at first. You could see it in his eyes—the hope that maybe someone, anyone, would step forward and reach out a hand. But the hands never came. Instead, there were more rumors, more judgments.

"Do you know what they’re saying about him now?" people would murmur. "They say he’s lost his mind."

In truth, it wasn’t his mind that was lost, but his soul. And gossip was the poison that killed it. Each word, each sideways glance, was another cut, another drop of venom. He began to withdraw, not because he wanted to, but because the world outside had become unbearable. His smile, once so easy and natural, disappeared. In its place was a mask—a fragile, brittle thing that cracked a little more every day.

People didn’t understand that depression is not just sadness. It’s a weight, a slow suffocation, and when you add the cruelty of gossip to it, it becomes unbearable. My father tried to speak once, to explain how he felt. But people didn’t listen. They heard only what they wanted to hear, their minds already clouded by rumors. He was left alone with his pain, and in that solitude, the poison began to take its toll.

The night he died was quiet, like every night before it. But in the silence, something inside him broke. He took the pills—poisoned by despair and by the words of others. But what really killed him wasn’t the pills. It was the loneliness, the gossip, the weight of being misunderstood, until he could no longer bear it.

People often wonder how to kill a soul. It doesn’t take much—a few careless words, a bit of gossip, and a refusal to listen. That’s how you kill a soul. By making someone feel like they don’t matter, like their pain is insignificant. That’s how you strip away the last bits of hope until there’s nothing left but darkness.

My father didn’t die the night he took those pills. He died long before, when the world stopped seeing him for who he really was. When the people who should have cared turned their backs and chose to gossip instead.

And that’s how you kill a soul. Slowly, quietly, until it’s gone.