What do you call it when the only reason you keep going is because you don’t want to leave a mental burden for the people you love?

People say that, in moments like this, you should reach out. But reaching out to people who don’t know what to do with your pain can leave everyone feeling worse. They feel worried and helpless, and you feel even more hopeless, like you’ve confirmed the thing you feared most: that you’re a burden.

How are you supposed to look at the people around you and say, “I’m tired. I can’t cope. I’m here in body, but not in spirit. It feels like, in some ways, I’m already gone. I’m not here because I want to be, but because I can’t bear the thought of hurting you”?

If I had even a small amount of feeling left, maybe saying that out loud would make me cry. But the strangest part is that it doesn’t. I don’t feel sad, or angry, or even numb in a way I can name. I just feel nothing.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up. I know this isn’t normal. I know I need help. I’ve reached out to the services that are supposed to help, and I’m trying to be patient with a system that is clearly stretched beyond what it can handle. From the outside, it probably looks like inaction. In reality, it feels more like being left in a holding pattern while your mind continues to unravel.

And in the meantime, life doesn’t pause.

Every waking minute feels filled with anxiety. My whole body is stuck on high alert. A letterbox rattling in the wind, a phone notification, a noise from next door, each one sends a jolt through me. I wake up already drained, emotionless, with barely enough energy to get out of bed, let alone function like a normal person.

That’s the part I don’t know how to explain to people who haven’t lived it. The world keeps asking for performance from you even when your mind is barely surviving. At some point, I have to go back to work, because bills don’t stop and jobs don’t wait forever. But mentally, I’m not okay. I’m not stable. And when my work suffers because of that, then what?

That’s the question I keep coming back to. Not because I want pity, and not because I’ve stopped trying, but because I genuinely do not know what a person is supposed to do when they know they need help, have asked for it, and are still left trying to survive the gap between crisis and care.