I Don't Even Know Why I'm Writing This

By Anshul Purvia

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Maybe because I can’t say it out loud. Maybe because if I do, it’ll sound too real, and I don’t think I can survive that kind of truth right now.

It’s 3:07 a.m. The fan is making that same humming sound it always does, and the world is too quiet. My head isn’t. It’s loud. It’s always loud. Thoughts spinning, replaying, repeating like a broken record that won’t shut up. I keep thinking…maybe the only things that ever stay are the ones that hurt. People leave, even the ones who swore they wouldn’t. But pain? Pain doesn’t even ask permission. It just moves in. Unpacks its things. Makes itself comfortable inside my chest.

And I let it.

Because at least it stays.

I’ve spent so long trying to push it away. To “get better.” To “move on.” But I’m tired. I’m so damn tired. What if this—this heaviness, this ache—is just who I am now? What if I’ve forgotten how to exist without it?

Sometimes I think my pain is the only thing that understands me. It knows the parts of me that no one sees. The versions of me that don’t speak, that just stare at the wall and feel everything all at once. Maybe that’s why I stopped fighting it. Because fighting feels pointless. Because maybe if I make peace with it, it’ll finally stop trying to destroy me.

But it doesn’t.

It just sits there quietly.

Like it knows it owns me.

I talk to my problems sometimes. Is that crazy? I tell them, “you win.” I tell them, “fine, stay.” Because honestly, I don’t know who I am without them. They’ve been here through every goodbye, every disappointment, every time I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person staring back. My problems are the only ones who never left.

People say healing is beautiful. But no one tells you it’s also lonely. You have to let go of the parts of yourself that kept you alive. The sad version. The overthinker. The one who knows how to survive heartbreak, but not peace. Peace feels like drowning in silence sometimes. Like when the pain stops screaming, and all that’s left is emptiness. I think I’d rather have the noise.

I overthink everything. I analyze every text I didn’t get, every word I said wrong, every laugh that sounded forced. I tear myself apart for things no one else even noticed. I replay moments until they stop feeling real. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really lived any of it, or if I just existed inside my head the whole time.

Maybe that’s why I hold onto my pain so tightly, it’s proof I was here. Proof that something once mattered.

You know what’s funny? Sometimes, when I think I’ve finally made peace with it, when I finally stop crying over the same things, I start missing it. I start missing the ache. Missing the weight in my chest. Because when it’s gone, I don’t know what to feel. I don’t know how to live without something breaking inside me.

I think I’ve been confusing pain with love. Because both stay for a while, both change you, and both eventually leave. And when they do, they take pieces of you with them.

I hate how much I’ve learned to need what hurts me. I hate that I’ve made a home out of heartbreak. That I’ve built my identity around everything that went wrong. Maybe that’s the cruelest part,learning to love your damage so much that you don’t know how to exist without it.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and imagine what it would feel like to wake up light. To breathe without that invisible hand around my throat. To not have my heart racing for no reason. But even in that fantasy, there’s a small part of me whispering, “don’t let it go.” Because who am I if not the broken one?

I think that’s the scariest part of healing.

It’s not the pain leaving—it’s me not knowing what’s left behind.

So maybe I won’t heal tonight. Maybe I’ll just sit here with it a little longer. Let it stay. Let it hum in my bones and remind me I’m still alive. Because if pain is all I’ve ever known, maybe it’s the only thing that still feels like home.

By Anshul Purvia