When Life Is Slowly Bleeding Out.

Everyone thinks it’s the big stuff that breaks you.

The failed rescue.
The kid in the wreck.
The one call that keeps replaying when everything else is quiet.

And yeah, those moments change you.

But that’s not what wears you down.

What gets you?

Is the slow erosion no one warns you about.

The call that runs over and steals your only hour with your kid.

The partner who stops asking how your day was because you never have the words.

The workout you skip again because your legs feel like bricks and your brain won’t slow down.

The cold coffee.
The missed birthday.
The ache in your back that never goes away.
The empty tank you still have to drive home on.

Those things don’t make the headlines.
They’re not what gets listed in the EAP paperwork.
But they accumulate.

Quietly. Relentlessly.

Until one day you look up and realise…

You’ve built an entire life around surviving, not living.

And even when you do try to come up for air…

…the system has nothing real to offer you.
A few therapy sessions if you’re lucky.
Some outdated checklist from HR.
Maybe a “resilience training” from someone who’s never done anything hard in their life.

So you keep going.

Because you’re supposed to be the strong one.
Because asking for help still feels like weakness, even when you know better.
Because you’ve built armor around the very parts of you that are desperate to be seen.

You wonder if anyone else feels this tired.
This numb.
This lost in their own life.

They do.

They just stopped talking about it a long time ago.

Because saying it out loud might make it real.
Because it’s easier to stay quiet than risk being seen as too much or not enough.

But here’s what I’ll say, because someone has to:

You’re not the problem.
The system is.
And pretending it doesn’t cost you anything is the lie that’s keeping you stuck.

So if you feel like you’re breaking?

You’re not alone.
You’re just carrying what no one else has seen clearly enough to name.

Yet.