I can be doing everything right. Drinking water. Getting enough sleep. Moving my body. Smiling at people in the hallway. Laughing at the right parts of a conversation. On paper, I look like I’m okay. Like someone who has their life in order. Like someone who made it through.

But then it hits. Not with drama, but with precision. A heaviness that slides in without asking, as if it was always waiting beneath the surface. My chest tightens. My breath catches. The simplest thoughts start to twist into knots. And suddenly, nothing feels safe – not even my own skin.

The hardest part is how familiar it feels. My body knows this place too well. I thought healing would erase the old scripts, but sometimes it just teaches you how to act them out with more grace. I can’t predict the switch. There’s no warning. One minute I’m here. The next, I’m watching myself from a distance, holding a conversation while my insides spiral.

And I still show up. I still respond to emails. I still answer “how are you?” with a practiced kind of brightness. I’ve learned to function through the fog. To perform okay-ness while carrying the weight of a thousand quiet collapses.

But that’s what makes it lonelier. People see the smile and assume the storm has passed. No one notices the parts of me underwater. No one hears what it costs to keep breathing when everything inside me is begging to come up for air.

This isn’t a cry for help. It’s a quiet truth. Sometimes the strongest thing I do is survive invisibly. And sometimes, that’s what breaks me most.