The alarm screamed, but she didn't move. The sound blended into the rest of the noise she had grown accustomed to: the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock, the faint buzz of a car engine outside. All of it was background—just something to remind her she was still here, still counting the hours in slow, painful increments.
She finally got up because the floor was colder than her sheets. She went through the motions: shower, brush teeth, throw on clothes she didn't care about. Her reflection in the mirror didn't matter. There was no one to impress, and no one ever asked. The girl looking back at her was a stranger with the same eyes she used to recognize in herself.
School was worse than home. At home, the silence was empty, predictable. At school, it pressed on her from every direction. The laughter of friends she couldn't join, the whispered plans for parties she didn't want to attend, the way teachers assumed participation equaled engagement—all of it was another weight on her chest.
She walked the halls in a quiet blur. Everyone was alive in ways she couldn't be. She tried to remember a time she had felt that alive too, but the memory was smudged, like a photo left in the rain.
Lunch was the same. Her tray, untouched, waiting for her in the corner of the cafeteria. She stared at the ceiling tiles instead of the chatter around her. Each laugh and shout felt like a reminder she didn't belong anywhere.
After school, she didn't go anywhere. Home, again, but home was just another room. Her bedroom smelled faintly of old paper and dust. She lay on her bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, tracing them with her eyes, imagining tiny black rivers running through the plaster. She wanted to leave, but leaving required energy she didn't have.
By nightfall, exhaustion wasn't enough to erase the day. She sat in darkness, her phone dim against her chest. Sometimes she texted someone she knew would never reply. Sometimes she stared at a blank screen, hoping that maybe, just maybe, a message would appear out of nowhere—a signal that the world noticed she existed. It never did.
The city outside went on as if nothing was wrong. People laughed. People shouted. People lived. And she… just existed.
Every day was the same. Gray, silent, unbearable.
And every night, she whispered to the darkness: Why am I like this? Why am I still here?
The darkness didn't answer.