The Night I Forgot How to Breathe — and Learned How to Begin Again

There are moments you think you’ll remember forever — weddings, graduations, the first time someone says they love you. But the moment I remember most vividly is the night I sat on the edge of my bed, unable to breathe, convinced something inside me had broken for good.

It wasn’t a panic attack, not exactly. It wasn’t anything I could name at the time. Just a quiet, crushing weight on my chest, a sense that the air around me had grown too thick to swallow.

I was alone. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t cry. I just sat there — still, frozen — while the world moved on outside my window.

That moment, though I didn’t know it then, was the beginning of something. It was the first time I had to admit to myself: I am not okay.

Until then, I had kept moving. I’d smiled through exhaustion, joked through disappointment, nodded through every “I’m fine” even when I wasn’t. I thought strength meant pretending. I thought surviving meant silence.

But that night broke the illusion.

I didn’t suddenly get better. There was no magical fix. But something shifted — something real. The next morning, I made the smallest decision that felt like the biggest leap: I wrote three words in a notebook.

“Still here. Trying.”

That was it. No poetry, no wisdom. Just proof that I had made it through the night, and that I was willing to try again — even if trying looked like breathing, drinking water, or just getting out of bed.

Over time, I kept writing. Little sentences. Fragments. Honest things I hadn’t said out loud. Some days it was nonsense. Some days it was angry. But it was mine — raw and real and messy.

That notebook is still with me. The handwriting’s sloppy. The pages are creased. But it holds proof that I kept going. That even when everything felt unbearable, I didn’t disappear.

Now, when I meet people who say they feel “off” or “numb” or just “tired all the time,” I don’t try to fix them. I just tell them what I wish someone had told me:

“You’re still here. That counts for something.”