if it happens

Hypothetically-

If it happens- it was never sudden. 

People like to think of endings as impulsive- dramatic, immediate, catastrophic. Sometimes- they simply arrive quietly. The slow build-up of exhaustion mistaken for resilience by everyone watching from the outside.

She has thought about it before. As a teenager, she romanticised disappearance in the way lonely young people often do. But back then- there was still performance in it. A desire to be witnessed. To interrupt the silence surrounding her with something impossible to ignore.

This feels different- the feeling resembles absence of excitement rather than pain.

She's moving through her days with the peculiar sense that everything has already happened. During the drive to work one morning, a strange calm settled over her so completely that it didn't frighten her- it was a casual certainty. The same sense of finality that cats understand when on their last legs. Sunday, she thought. It should happen next Sunday. She's free on Sunday.

Outwardly, she remains intact. Functional. Even desirable. Inside, however, there is very little left. Everything following the last attempt became performance disguised as recovery: the career progression, the repaired relationships, the careful routines, the stint as an expat. She arranged herself into something socially acceptable again. Something presentable. But- beneath all of it- it remained. The same hollowed interior she keeps unsuccessfully trying to furnish.

Sometimes she sits in churches despite no longer believing with any real conviction. Mostly because silence feels less humiliating there. She carries on conversations internally with something she is not entirely certain is listening. Perhaps faith is simply what remains when people have exhausted everyone else.

There is a particular loneliness in being perceived as emotionally capable. People mistake composure for capacity. They hand her their grief, their anxieties, their crises- and, over time, she became a container for everyone except herself. Always the caretaker. Rarely held. And, perhaps that is the cruelest part: how many people have taken pieces from her over the years while remaining convinced they treated or loved her well. 

If it happens- there will be people who insist they never saw it coming. But- honestly, the signs were everywhere. Some of you just chose to ignore them. It was in the unopened mail. In the untouched fridge. In the exhaustion mistaken for maturity. In the way she increasingly spoke about herself as though she were already becoming memory. 

If it happens- she wants to thank the ones who tried. Although, there is nothing any of you could really do to save her. She acknowledges the strange and uncomfortable position she's put you in- and she's sorry for it. And- perhaps, this is the last time she will be. 

"Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be." - "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes