This Is Not How I Wanted Things To Go

I was seventeen.

I was seventeen.

No longer a child, yet far from the adult I thought I was becoming. The world felt vast, full of opportunities and pitfalls, but I was caught somewhere in between—confused, impulsive, and immature. I wore confidence like a fragile mask, believing I knew what pain was. I'd scraped my knees before, had my heart bruised by fleeting crushes, and faced disappointments. But those were nothing compared to what was coming.

I thought I knew pain.

But I was wrong.

It started subtly, like a whisper carried by the wind. At first, it was just a cold shoulder here, a missed call there. Then, the whispers became louder, more insistent. My friends—people I trusted, people who knew my secrets—began to pull away. They turned their backs on me, one by one, until I was left standing alone in the middle of a storm I didn't understand.

The rumors, the lies, the betrayal—it all shattered me like a fragile piece of glass. And there I was, lying in pieces, broken and abandoned. The people who were supposed to pick me up, to help me piece myself together, were the very ones who had torn me apart.

They treated me like I was nothing.

Worthless.

Trash.

That feeling burrowed deep inside me, gnawing at my soul, eroding the small slivers of self-worth I had left.

The voices in my head began to echo their words, repeating them until they became my truth.

Maybe they were right.

Maybe I was worthless.

Maybe I was trash.

Maybe I was a burden to everyone I knew, a mistake that shouldn't have been made.

I didn't know what to believe anymore. Those voices in my head were loud, incessant, and poisonous, like a dark fog clouding my thoughts. I tried to fight them, to silence them, to push them away. I tried to remind myself of who I was before, of the dreams I had, of the laughter I used to share with those very friends. But the fog only thickened, suffocating me in its grip.

I tried everything to make it stop. I tried to find solace in music, in books, in anything that could drown out the noise in my mind. But nothing worked. The voices wouldn't shut up, wouldn't leave me alone. They grew louder with each passing day, each lonely night.

Desperation took hold, wrapping around my heart like a vice. I wanted it to end. I wanted the pain to stop. The voices had convinced me that there was only one way out, one way to find peace.

So I made a decision that night, a decision born out of agony and confusion.

I took a knife to my skin, thinking I could end it all.

I woke up, disoriented, with the sterile scent of antiseptic filling my nostrils. The ceiling above me was stark white, cold, and unfamiliar. The steady beeping of a machine echoed in the room, a reminder that I was still tethered to this world.

I'm still alive.

But the realization didn't bring relief. Instead, it filled me with anger. A deep, burning rage that I had to continue living in a world that had already caused me so much pain. The very thought of it made my chest tighten.

I was mad—furious—that I had to face the same agony again. To be thrust back into the same situation, the same endless cycle of hurt and despair that I had desperately tried to escape. The idea of going through it all again felt unbearable.

I turned my head slowly, feeling the weight of exhaustion pull at my limbs. Beside me sat a man, his eyes wide with worry, anxiety etched into every line of his face.