Me

 There’s something deeply unsettling about realising that the thing consuming me isn’t out there in the world, sharpening its teeth in the dark, waiting for the right moment to strike. No, that would’ve been easier. I could’ve fought that. I could’ve run, screamed, blamed fate, blamed circumstance, blamed anything but myself. But this is different. And somewhere in all this, I realise something terrifying, I am both the victim and the accomplice. I’m holding the door open while it walks in. I’m handing it the knife and pretending your hands are tied. It would be poetic to say I’m fighting back. That there’s some grand resistance building inside me, waiting for the right moment to reclaim what’s mine. But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? Most days, I’m just watching. Watching as it takes another piece, small enough to ignore, significant enough to matter. Watching as it carves me down not into nothing, but into something quieter, easier to carry, easier to control. Watching as I become someone you barely recognise, but not quite enough of a stranger to reject. And yet, despite all of this, there’s something it hasn’t managed to consume. Not strength not yet, at least. That would be too generous a word. But awareness. A faint, almost irritating clarity that refuses to go away. The part of me that notices what’s happening, that narrates it, that sits in the corner and says, this isn’t normal, this isn’t all there is. And maybe that’s the part worth paying attention to not because it saves me in some dramatic, cinematic way, but because it refuses to disappear completely. Because lately, it feels like I’ve stopped resisting. Like somewhere along the way, I got tired of holding the walls up, tired of pretending the space inside me was empty. The effort of containment became heavier than the thing I was trying to contain. And it noticed. It always notices. There’s a shift now subtle, but undeniable. Not hunger beginning, but hunger returning. Sharper. More certain. As if everything it has taken so far was only enough to sustain it, never enough to satisfy. I can feel it pressing closer. Not breaking through. Not yet. But no longer patient in the same way. So if this reads like an apology, maybe it is not to the world, not as some warning, but to the version of myself that believed this could be held together indefinitely. To the days that felt lighter, to the people who knew me in ways that now feel distant, almost borrowed.

I’M SORRY REALLY REALY SORRY BUT THE INEVITABLE HAS TO COME. I HAVE LOST HOPE AND HE IS HUNGRIER THAN EVER SO THIS MIGHT BE A GOODBYE, NOT THE WAY I WANTED IT TO BE.

I’m sorry.

Not because something is coming from outside—

but because something inside me has been here all along,

and I don’t know how much longer I can pretend it isn’t trying to take my place.