I had a plan, and the plan was to avoid my mistakes—the kind that do not merely trip the body, but fracture the soul. I look at those who err with simplicity, with a clean, objective pragmatism, and I feel a heavy, silent envy. They stumble, they rise, they restart without a single hesitation, while I turn every misstep into a profound, suffocating liturgy. I wanted that lightness, the grace of those who stretch their hearts out in the sun and laugh without calculating the cost. Instead, I am a captive of my own absurd speculations, constantly threatening my own sanity, inventing fragile theories just to watch them collapse and crush me. By creating these mental monsters, I torment, sabotage, and poison myself in a fraction of a second—and that, in its terrifying efficiency, is enough.

There is a wild, untamed storm inside me that craves the quietude of those who are not storms and do not even realize it. I watch the man who saves himself from disaster simply by choosing another path, free from the daily anguish and the emotional traps that I so meticulously set for myself. I wanted to say farewell to barren loves that consume rather than sweeten, to stop collecting resentment like a designer label worn out of spiteful habit. To be practical would mean to stop drowning in sorrow, to kill a single fear without watching two more breed in its place. But I am trapped in the geometry of my own labyrinth, carrying to bed the very things that refuse to let me sleep, multiplying questions that have no right to exist, and obsessing over answers that only bring more darkness.

To be pragmatic is a silent courage I have yet to master; it is the ability to discard guilt without first throwing a funeral for it. I am tired of living endless mental battles where I am always the one left bleeding on the floor, tired of dragging a calculated, pessimistic past into a future that deserves to breathe. I want to stop overthinking, stop over-talking, stop losing the very spark that makes me human. I do not want to announce or mourn my departures before I am even gone, nor do I want to continue this slow, agonizing ritual of dying a little at a time. I want, with the finality of an intake of breath, to say goodbye for good—and simply exist.

© Beatriz Esmer