A Quiet Goodbye...

Dear Readers,

It had been Snowing relentlessly all day, drumming against the windowpane with a rhythmic ferocity that mirrored my thoughts. Sitting on the edge of my unmade bed, I stared at the floor, the stillness around me punctuated by the hum of a world that felt distant and irrelevant.

I wasn’t looking for pity or redemption. I didn’t want someone to swoop in and save me. I’d long abandoned the notion of being understood. What I craved was silence a true silence that the world could never offer. The kind of quiet that existed in the absence of everything. I wanted peace, not the fleeting kind found in a bottle or a moment of distraction, but something final. Something complete.

For years, I had carried the weight of expectations, the burden of trying to fit into a world that seemed to reject me at every turn. People always said, “It gets better,” or “You just need to keep trying,” but those words felt hollow, as if they belonged to another language, one I had never been taught. They didn’t know how it felt to have everything taken away, to live every day as if the ground beneath my feet was crumbling. People thought they knew everything about me, but they didn’t. They didn’t see the cracks, the void that grew larger with each passing day. They didn’t understand how it felt when nothing ever worked out, no matter how hard I tried.

The voices in my head were louder these days, persistent whispers that tugged at the edges of my sanity. “Give up,” they said. “They don’t need you. Kill yourself. End it.” I didn’t argue with them anymore. I knew they were lying, and yet, a part of me found their suggestions comforting in their simplicity. The world had always felt complicated; death, at least, promised simplicity.

Isolation had become my sanctuary, the only place where I felt any semblance of control. It was easier to withdraw, to exist in the solitude of my thoughts than to face the relentless misunderstanding of others. I didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. I didn’t want it. People thought they could fix me with empty platitudes or forced optimism, but they didn’t understand. They never would. Isolation wasn’t loneliness it was clarity, a way to shield myself from a world that had nothing left to offer.

The room around me was a prison of my own making. Whenever I cleaned. What was the point? I used to think in my mind. The cleaned surfaces, the washed dishes, and the washed laundry were an honest reflection of the chaos inside me, but nothing else to keep me sane. The world outside might demand order, but I no longer cared to pretend.

I glanced at the clock. The hours ticked by like a slow drip of water, each second an ache I could feel in my bones. I thought about the others the ones who moved through life so effortlessly, who seemed immune to the kind of pain that gripped me. They weren’t the enemy. I didn’t resent their joy. I simply couldn’t understand it, couldn’t imagine what it felt like to wake up with something to look forward to.

The comments from others echoed in my mind, each one sharper than the last. “We know everything about you,” they’d say, as if their assumptions were truth. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know the endless nights I spent unraveling, the way my chest ached with the weight of invisible wounds. They didn’t know how much effort it took just to exist, to breathe, to stay in a world that felt so unwelcoming. I didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. I never wanted it. I just wanted peace a peace no one could give me.

I walked to the window and opened it, letting the cold wind pelt my face. The cold sting grounded me, if only for a moment. I closed my eyes and let the cold wind mix with the tears and freeze them, I didn’t bother to wipe them away. For the first time that day, I felt a flicker of clarity. Death wasn’t something I feared. It wasn’t about running away or giving up. It was about finding the peace I’d been denied in life. I wasn’t angry or bitter; I was simply tired.

I picked up a notebook from the bedside table, its pages worn and frayed from years of use. This wasn’t a letter to anyone else. It wasn’t an explanation or an apology. It was for me alone a final act of honesty in a world that never seemed to value it.

“I’ve tried to make sense of it all,” I wrote, my handwriting uneven. “I’ve fought, I’ve waited, I’ve hoped. But I’ve reached the edge, and there’s nothing left for me here. This isn’t about anyone else. It’s about me finally finding the stillness I’ve been searching for.”

I paused, letting the pen hover over the page. A part of me wanted to keep writing, to pour everything out, but there was no need. I’d said all that mattered. Closing the notebook, I placed it neatly on the table, aligning it with the edge as if to give this one small act of order to my chaotic existence.

The snow continued to fall as I stepped outside. The cold air wrapped around me like an embrace, and for the first time in years, I felt a faint smile tug at my lips. There was no audience, no grand gesture. Just a man walking into the night, letting the snow bury me clean as I disappeared into the darkness.

For me, this wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of the silence I’d longed for. And in that quiet, I found the peace I’d been chasing all my entire life, alone and finally free.

Wish only that one person could understand me… But who cares…

Jacob M