Never Reads This

If you're reading this, I asked you not to.

But you are. So maybe it's already too late.

You were never meant to read this—not really. I wrote it the way people scream into pillows, or whisper secrets to locked journals. I didn’t think anyone would care enough to find it. Or maybe I hoped someone would. Maybe I hoped you would.

I called this “Never Reads This” because it felt safer that way. Safer to pretend no one would ever see it. That I could pour every cracked piece of myself into these pages and leave it behind like footprints in snow. Gone with the thaw.

But here we are.

People like to talk about trauma as something sharp. Obvious. Loud. But that’s a lie. Most of it is quiet. Slow. It creeps in like fog, soft and suffocating. You don’t wake up one day and decide to give up. You just stop deciding.

At first, it’s little things.

You don’t reply to that message.

You skip dinner.

You pretend the headache is physical.

People don’t notice. Why would they? You’re still showing up. Still posting memes. Still smiling in group photos. Still saying, “I’m just tired.”

And everyone accepts that. Because no one really wants to hear the truth.

I was always the one who listened.

The fixer. The helper.

The “therapist friend.”

People came to me with their problems. Their breakups. Their existential dread. I carried their pain like it was mine. I stayed up until 4 AM with people who didn’t text me back the next day. I was always reachable… until I wasn’t.

I started testing people.

Stopped texting first.

Stopped replying instantly.

Delayed my “likes” and “hearts.”

The silence that followed wasn’t accidental.

It was proof.

Proof that when I stopped reaching out, most people stopped reaching at all.

There’s a kind of loneliness that exists even in crowded rooms. A silence that roars louder than any scream. I know it well. I lived there for years.

I don’t remember the exact moment I broke. Probably because I didn’t break all at once. It was gradual, like a rope fraying strand by strand until it finally snaps—without sound, without warning.

People like to ask, “Why didn’t they say something?”

I did.

You just didn’t hear it.

Because I didn’t say it in the way you wanted.

I said it in skipped calls. In dry laughs. In the way my eyes avoided yours when I said I was fine.

You nodded. You believed me.

Because that was easier.

The truth is, I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to keep feeling like this.

The numbness. The ache. The weight of my own thoughts.

I wanted it to stop.

I wanted silence.

I wanted peace.

But peace never came, and no one offered to sit in the dark with me.

They kept flipping on the lights, saying, “Just think positive,”

as if the shadows would disappear if I just smiled hard enough.

I wrote this letter a hundred times before.

Burned the pages. Deleted the drafts.

I kept telling myself:

“Maybe tomorrow will be different.”

“Maybe someone will notice.”

“Maybe I’ll feel something again.”

But I’m tired of maybes.

There’s something you should know though.

Despite it all, I don’t hate you.

I don’t even blame you.

You did what most people do.

You loved me in the ways you knew how.

And I needed something you didn’t know how to give.

That’s not your fault.

It’s not mine either.

We were speaking different languages.

Mine was silence. Yours was noise.

I wish we had met in the middle.

If there’s anything I want this letter to do—anything at all—it’s this:

Make you see the people around you differently.

Stop assuming that “I’m okay” means they are.

Start listening when the words don’t match the eyes.

Check in. And then check in again.

Not because it’s your responsibility to fix people,

but because being seen is sometimes all a person needs to keep going.

I didn’t need a grand gesture.

I didn’t need a cure.

I just needed someone to sit beside me and say,

“You don’t have to carry this alone.”

That would have been enough.

By now, you’re probably wondering when I wrote this.

Was it yesterday?

Last month?

Last year?

The truth is, I wrote this on one of my darkest nights.

But I didn’t send it.

I left it somewhere I thought no one would look.

Because I wasn’t ready to be saved.

Because I didn’t think I deserved to be.

But maybe you found it for a reason.

Maybe this is your sign.

Maybe you’re the one who needs to read this.

So if you’re the person who cries in the shower so no one hears,

If you’ve ever stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m. and thought, “I can’t do this anymore,”

If you’ve ever laughed at your own pain because no one else seemed to care—

I want you to know something.

You are not invisible.

You are not a burden.

And this world is better with you in it.

Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Even when no one says it.

Even when the only thing keeping you here is the faint hope that maybe—just maybe—tomorrow will be different.

Let tomorrow come.

Wait for the light.

Even shadows need it to exist.

This story was never really meant to be a goodbye.

Not entirely.

It was meant to be found.

It was meant to be read.

It was meant to be a mirror.

To show you what’s behind the masks.

To remind you that you’re not alone in your loneliness.

And to say the one thing I needed to hear:

Stay.