I wish everything would just end right now.

I wish everything would just end right now. At this moment. I wish this. I pray this. I beg this. I hope this. I write this. I ache this. This animal inside me has decapitated my will to "somehow still go on" that I had meticulously and desperately conjured up from the ruins of all my other breakdowns. It tore through the fragile scaffolding I had built with late-night poems, unsent messages, and half-meant affirmations. It laughed in the face of my progress, spat on my healing, and left me: bleeding, breathless, bewildered. There’s a ringing in my ears again. A silence so loud it scrapes at the back of my skull. I feel like I am drowning in my own body. Not water. Not thoughts. Just the heaviness of being. If I could unzip this skin, if I could silence this mind, if I could stop this heart from always hoping when it knows better… I would. Tonight, I am just a prayer that won’t be answered. I whisper into the dark like it’s a god. Like maybe it’s listening. But the dark doesn’t answer. It never does. It only presses itself closer to me, like a lover who doesn’t love back. I keep blinking, not out of fatigue but out of hope that when I open my eyes again, I will be somewhere else.

Nowhere. Anything but here. My chest feels like a locked room where something is screaming behind the walls: something ancient, something breaking its own throat trying to be heard. I am tired of being alive with an asterisk. Alive, but unraveling. Alive, but begging for pause. Alive, but not wanting to be. I try to name what hurts, but there is no language for this. Only metaphors. Only howling. It’s not sadness. It’s not grief. It’s not even despair. It’s erosion. It’s a soul that has been weathered down to pulp. It’s a scream that has grown so old, it has learned how to sit still. I don't want comfort. I don't want to be told "it will pass." I want this to end. I want me to end. Or maybe not end. Just disappear. Melt into the air like fog and never reassemble. I want to be unreadable. Untouched. Unremembered. I want to stop being a burden made of skin. I don’t know if this is a cry for help. I think it’s just a cry. Maybe, a cry for an end. A full stop. Help implies something can be done. This... This is beyond rescue. This is the quiet crumpling of something that was never really whole. And still. And still. I breathe. Why?

Please. Whoever, whatever, if anything listens... please. End it. End me. I am not asking anymore. I am not praying. I am begging. On mental knees. With my soul in my hands, bleeding through the cracks of my fingers. Please: do what I cannot. Finish what I cannot. Take this body off my back. Take this mind, this cruel, looping, echo chamber that feeds on its own decay. Take this constant throb of being awake in a life I did not consent to. I scream in silence so it won’t scare anyone. I cry with my spine so no one hears it. I am so polite in my suffering, and I don’t know why. Why am I trying to be graceful when I’m dying on the inside every goddamn day? There is no poetry left in this. No beauty. No tragic allure. It’s just exhaustion so complete it has turned into a static hum across everything. I keep waiting for someone, some force, some cosmic mercy, to finally notice me. To finally say, “Okay. That’s enough. You can go now.” But no one comes. No one ever does. The universe has ghosted me. Even death won’t answer my texts. And I don’t have the courage to do it myself. I am too much of a coward to leave. And too broken to stay. So what is this in-between? What do you call this purgatory of the living? Do you hear me? Whoever you are; god, void, fate, accident: I am done. Please. Please. Please. Unmake me.

No one is coming. I know this. I’ve always known. There is no divine ear bent toward me. No fate circling my name with concern. No shadowy mercy slipping through the cracks of this night to grant me release. Nothing will stop this. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever. The sun will rise, like it always does. It will crawl over my windowsill, indifferent, steady and peel the night off me like an unwanted second skin. It will urge me to get up. Put on my face. Move my limbs. Pretend. Again. And I will. Because I always do. Because I am too afraid not to. But right now... This night, this moment, this silence that presses like a hand over my mouth. It seduces me. It tells me I can break here. Fully. Quietly. Without consequence. It whispers that I can disassemble myself, limb by limb, thought by thought, and scatter the pieces across this bed like a ritual no one will ever witness. It tells me to stop trying. To stop pretending there’s light at the end of anything. And so I lie still, letting it hold me. Letting the ache touch bone. Letting the despair seep into the last dry parts of me that still hoped. I daydream, not of better things, not of healing but of letting go. Completely. No fight. No drama. No blood. Just… silence. A vanishing. And maybe that’s the closest I’ll ever get. To peace. To nothing. To rest. But the clock ticks. And I know the sun is coming. And I know I will rise. But not because I want to. Only because the world refuses to let me stay gone. And maybe... maybe that’s the real cruelty.

But, I wish everything would just end right now. At this moment. I wish this. I pray this. I beg this. I hope this. I write this. I ache this. (Can I do this...?)

- Oizys.

Black on her hands // God is not in the chat

Part 1: Black on her hands

So, I got my keyboard repaired this weekend. The weekend itself has been quite glazy; soft-edged, slippery, like I wasn’t fully inside it. The animal has been clawing within me again. Overthinking. Over-psychoanalyzing. Everything. Everyone. Myself most of all. 

Saturday was almost ethereal; a good, smooth day. Had some evening snacks with my sister; they were almost good. I was almost full, so I skipped dinner. Sunday morning, we cooked together. Somewhere between spices and small talk, I got sick. Paused. Came back to the kitchen anyway. We had pasta together; a quiet, warm thing. Later, we played games. She went to sleep. I didn’t. I listened to music, aimlessly daydreamed, drifted a little. Then my parents came back from a trip. My sister and I had a heavy late lunch. I started getting ready to go out with her. That’s when it happened.

I overheard my mother talking on the phone with her friend (the one who invited her to her daughter’s wedding ritual just hours earlier, but never mentioned the dress colour code). That same friend is starting a new business. And just like that, it struck me. A memory, soft and loud at once. One night, many nights ago, I remember my mother speaking in that half-asleep tone, whispering an idea: a small business she wanted to start. Something to sell. Something to create. And now, here we are. Someone else is doing it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It sat like a rock in my chest, a mist in my head.

Was my mother like me? Does she get sadly jealous too? Of others who do the things she once wanted for herself? Not the mean kind of envy, not to drag them down, but that quiet grief of seeing someone do the thing you dreamed of, and realizing: you didn’t. I couldn’t stop. I kept thinking about it while getting ready, while walking out, while handing over my laptop at the repair store, while sitting at the coffee shop to wait. It clung to me. This thought: My mother’s hand: black with her dreams rotting. And I don’t even know what I meant by that. But it felt true. Like somehow, her losses are shadow versions of my fears. And I can’t stop staring at them. Guilt oozes as conflicting emotions tear me apart. It’s not just sadness. It’s not just fear. It’s something messier; grief, envy, love, helplessness; all tangled. Why am I thinking about this so much? Why can’t I shake it off? Is it because she never got to have anything of her own? Is it because, in some terrible, unspoken way, my existence is complicit in robbing her of that chance? Or is it just my own fear: fear that I won’t be successful, that I’ll end up with the same unfinished dreams, locked away behind kitchen shelves and wedding invites? Maybe that’s why it hurts. Maybe when I see that flicker of fate in her, I panic: not for her, but for myself. And then I hate myself for making it about me. Is that hypocritical? Is it just human? I don’t know. But I keep thinking about it. And it won’t let me go. I can’t tell where she ends and I begin. And I don't know how to live a life like this: her burden or my burden or ours together. I guess that’s why I romanticize the idea of death. I guess that’s why I subconsciously stay back in this house to sit beside my mother’s misery like a quiet, unwanted guest. And I don't know how to escape this anymore. I blame the system. The society. The culture. The institution. Her family. My grandparents. My father. Her brother. Her sisters. All of them. Every single one. The ones who told her to be quiet. To adjust. The ones who made her believe a woman’s worth is in the way she serves, not the way she dreams. The ones who laughed when she imagined a life that was hers alone. The ones who called her ambition a phase, a tantrum, a shame. And maybe I blame myself, too, for not doing enough, for not being enough, for watching her shrink and never learning how to expand. Not out of drama. Not to escape. Just… the idea of rest. Silence. A life where I don’t feel like I’m carrying her broken dreams in my bones. A life that is mine, not an apology for hers. A morning where I wake up and the grief isn’t already waiting by the bed. A day without history clawing at my back. Just one breath that is completely my own. And even that feels hypocritical. Because what I genuinely want is a life like that for the two of us. For her, and for me. And I know that’s not possible. So the want and the realization wrestle; quietly, endlessly; inside me.

Part - 2: God is not in the chat

I came across ismatu.gwendolyn’s idea: journaling the news. Oh, the news. I pick it up now like a bruised fruit I can’t eat. It sits in my hand, leaking. And I scroll. Israel bombs Iranian nuclear sites. Children die unnamed in Gaza. Boats sink with people no one will ever rescue or remember. Another leader rises. Another lie is swallowed whole. The planet warms. The people rage. The screens glow. And I just sit here. People are calling me. Messaging me. Emailing me. I have a meeting at 2. But I’m numb. So numb and uncaring when I am also, somehow, desperate for a job. For stability. For hope. Why? I try to figure it out, but I don’t know why. Maybe the horror is too big. Maybe the ambition feels fake next to missiles and mass graves. Maybe I’ve read too much news and not enough poetry. Maybe it’s all real. Maybe none of it is. The disconnect is dizzying. I open LinkedIn in one tab and watch war footage in the other. I update my CV while a death toll ticks up in real time. How am I supposed to care about bullet points when actual bullets are flying? How do I write a cover letter when the world’s on fire and no one’s coming with water? I think maybe this is why we all feel stuck. Not because we’re lazy or lost, but because the scale of suffering has made desire feel embarrassing. How dare I want good pasta or a great job or peace of mind when a mother across the border is digging her child out of rubble? And yet. I still want those things. I still check my email. I still attend the meeting. I still click “Apply.” Because what else is there? I’m not uncaring. I’m just… overwhelmed. And I don’t know if I’m numbed by tragedy or by powerlessness. Or if I’ve fused the two into a single feeling I don’t know how to name. But I’ll keep journaling. Not because it helps... But because it’s the only thing I know how to do. I keep refreshing the news. I scroll like it’s prayer: repetitive, empty, desperate. And in between, I ask the question I’ve been avoiding for months: What kind of future are we building toward? A future where we livestream war crimes and meme them before the blood is dry? Where billionaires play gods and actual gods stay silent? Where no one knows what truth is: only what trends? Are we building anything at all? Or just endlessly rearranging the rubble, calling it progress? I keep thinking: where is "god" in all this? The one they say watches everything. Is he watching now? Is he numb like me? Did he leave the room the moment we created the concept of “collateral damage”? Or maybe he’s still here, just quiet, buried under bureaucracy and drone strikes and funeral hashtags. And what are humans even? We are creatures who can cry over a fictional death in a show, and scroll past real dead children with dry eyes. We are capable of invention, of tenderness, of art and somehow also this: rape as a weapon of war. propaganda as morning news. people dying in the desert while rich men argue about fuel prices. What does that make us? Are we monsters pretending to be angels? Or angels slowly choosing to become monsters because it’s easier? And yet... And yet I see someone pull a cat out of rubble. I see strangers share their food in refugee lines. I see musicians play under the sound of bombs. I see love letters written on broken walls. So maybe we're not one thing. Maybe humans are the only creature both divine and disastrous: godlike in our dreams, but cursed by our choices. We want heaven. We build hell. We pray in the ruins. And me? I just sit here. Still scrolling. Still typing. Still trying to thread together headlines and heartbreak into something that makes sense. Still hoping there’s a shape to this chaos. Still believing, maybe foolishly, that writing it down is a way of staying human.

- Oizys