On the opposite chair… no one.

On the opposite chair… no one.

Me… I don’t know who I am.
Every morning, I open my eyes to myself as if seeing me for the first time.
A stranger to me, tired of me.
I search for my self among my features, but nothing stays.
Sometimes I feel I deserve the universe, sometimes I hate myself as if I were a crime.
Nothing is stable.
No feeling lasts.
No thought remains without turning against me.

Do I love you? Yes, with all of me, to the point of dissolution.
But a delayed reply, a wrong tone, is enough to make me feel you’re betraying me.
Then I hate you… and then I cry for hurting you.

Is this madness? I don’t know.
But I feel ruled by reactions I can’t control.
And every time I try to explain, they call me dramatic.
Every goodbye tears me apart.
Even a small, passing goodbye leaves a crater inside me.
I don’t just attach… I cling — madly — because something in me is unhinged.

When I’m with others, I seem restless, demanding, volatile.
But no one sees the fire under my skin.
I fight my thoughts every second:
you don’t love me, you’ll leave me, you lied when you said I’m here.
I turn from a trembling child to a roaring beast… within minutes.
Then I regret.
And I punish myself.
Then I need you again, and I beg, and I apologize a thousand times.

Relationships, to me, aren’t simple.
They’re the edge of a knife —
either I melt into you or I cut you.

Fear, for me, isn’t passing.
It’s a wall of pain pressing on my chest.
And whenever they tell me calm down,
I feel they’re asking me to stop breathing.

All that is in me wanted to love —
but what’s in me also… doesn’t know how.
And when this war grew too heavy,
I went out between two points with no road between them.

That’s how the day ends,
as everything in me ends:
on the edge of regret, and the beginning of collapse.

I close the outside, and return inside —
to the place where no one sees me.
To myself.
I am… from the inside and the outside,
ruin in the shape of a man.

I came back to my room after a day heavy with fear, filled with hate, stagnant with sadness.
Everything was in its place, yet everything felt strange — even me.
I didn’t take off my shoes.
I didn’t turn on the light.
I left the door half open.
Sat on the chair.

The silence was loud — too loud — and it made my heartbeat sound like footsteps of someone else in the room.
I tried to breathe quietly, afraid to disturb the ghosts of my own thoughts.

No doctor, no friend, no presence but mine.
I was facing something that looked like me and didn’t.
That voice that never quiets, never leaves, never lets me die in peace.
I lifted my gaze toward the opposite seat.
It was empty of everything —
except me.

I was there,
with accusing eyes,
with a face that knew everything I hide.
I looked at myself as one searching for a crime not yet confessed.
My silence was my witness,
and I was the judge, the witness, and the guilty one.

“How are you now?”
“I’m fine.”
I said it without hesitation —
but I lied.
I’m not fine.

I slept two hours.
I cried without a reason — or maybe because of all the reasons.
I felt I didn’t deserve air.
I hated myself, and I needed an embrace that wouldn’t ask why are you crying?

“What weighed you down this week?”
“Small things, maybe I’m overreacting.”
But inside, I was screaming:
everything hurts.
A glance, a stray word, a delayed message — I choke.
“Is he bored of me?
Is he planning to leave?”
I imagined my days without him.
I fear loneliness.
I fear repeating myself without someone.

Sometimes I scroll through old conversations, searching for a moment that proves I was once loved.
Sometimes I listen to my own voice notes, just to remember how I sound when I’m not breaking.

“Did you ever think of hurting yourself?”
I sighed.
Then said: “No… just tired.”

But the truth?
Every night, the thought visits me.
Not because I want to die,
but because the noise in my head won’t stop.
I want silence. Peace. Rest.
I want my war to lay down its weapons.

“Do you feel understood?”
I laughed, bitterly:
“Maybe not… maybe it’s my fault.”
Then lowered my head and whispered:
No one understands me — and I don’t blame them.
How can they understand someone who loves you and screams at you?
Who begs for your hug and pushes you away?

I’m not evil.
I’m just scared.
Scared of repetition, of abandonment, of myself.

Do they understand me?
No.
No one does.
Even I barely do.

How can they?
How can my contradictions be understood?
I love them, yet I shout.
I need them, yet I drive them away.
I attach too fast, drown in details, and explode for small reasons.

And after every explosion, I collect the ashes of what I broke and hold them close — because even ruins feel safer than emptiness.

All I ask is: don’t leave.
I’m not cruel.
I’m not toxic.
I’m just scared.

Scared of being forgotten.
Of being replaced — my hug, my words, my place.
Scared to love… and then be left.

I am fragile,
but I hide it in anger, in stubbornness, in sharp words.
I love fiercely,
but I don’t know how to show it without hurting myself or the ones I love.

There are nights when I whisper to the dark: please, teach me how to be gentle.
But even the dark stays quiet, as if afraid of me.

Everything in me is an old wound.
Everything I say is an attempt to understand myself.
But I get tired.
Tired of me, my face, my mind, my never-sleeping fear.

“What do you wish for?”
“To be understood — just once.
For someone to say: I’m here, I’m not afraid of you, or of you.
To be held without a question, without a reason.
For someone to stay when I’m at my worst.”

To be looked at without being analyzed.
To be loved without being fixed.
To rest without feeling guilty for resting.

I waited so long,
until I forgot what I was waiting for.
Forgot my face,
forgot who stood on the other side.
And when I grew tired of waiting,
I began waving to myself from afar —
as if I were the one leaving,
and the one begging not to be left.

And in the moment I thought I understood myself —
I was gone.
The room was empty.
The chair moved on its own.
And the mirror reflected nothing.
Not me.
Not the one who asked.
Not the one who answered.
The voice that never leaves…
had left.