Hello? Are You There?
It's me.
A human.
Drowning in a sea of people
who keep moving forward
while I sink beneath the surface.
My wife died.
I sat in that hospital
and watched them fail her,
watched the people whose one job was to save her
choose not to.
There was nothing I could do.
I have never trusted a hospital since.
My dog stayed beside me
through every hour of the falling apart
that came after.
He didn't leave.
Not once.
And then I watched him die too —
watched him beg me to save him
the way I once wanted them
to save her.
There was nothing I could do.
Now he's gone as well.
My body is breaking down piece by piece.
Compression fractures in my spine—
pain that never relents,
not for a breath,
not for a single moment of peace.
I pushed through chronic fatigue syndrome
trying to keep my business from collapsing,
pushed until my blood pressure climbed so high
it became a loaded gun at my temple.
And I'm allergic to the medications
that might save me from it.
My kidneys are failing.
My liver is worse.
Now I'm called "disabled"—
a blow to the ego of a once proud man
who stayed strong through it all.
The welfare system calls this "support"—
a lifetime sentence of subsistence,
of calculating what I can't afford,
which turns out to be everything.
There's no money
for anything at all.
Mental health services?
A cruel joke.
Check a box on their form.
Breathe deeply, they say.
Have you tried gratitude?
I stay alive for my daughter.
That's the only reason.
Not because of hope.
Not because healing feels possible.
Not because I want to be here.
Because she already watched her mother die
and I won't let her lose me too.
So I drown slowly
in my own shit
in grief that never left,
in pain that never sleeps,
in poverty that strips away dignity,
in the crushing weight of staying
when everything inside me
is begging to stop.
But I stay.
For her.
Only for her.
And some days
that reason isn't enough
to make this feel like living.
But it's enough
to keep my lungs moving.
To keep my heart beating.
Barely.
