Half Living

I think I'm disappearing on purpose

I don't think I'm lost anymore.
lost people still look for things.

I just stopped.

not suddenly.
it was quiet. gradual.
like turning the volume down on yourself
until you can barely hear anything at all.

I say yes to things I don't care about.
I stay in places that drain me.
I keep conversations alive that should've ended months ago.

not because I want to,
but because it's easier than dealing with what happens after you don't.

because once you start choosing yourself,
things break.

routines. expectations. people.

and I don't think I have the energy
to watch everything fall apart right now.

so I cooperate with a life
I don't even recognize as mine.

and the worst part?
it works.

nothing collapses.
no one confronts me.
I get to exist in this weird, in-between state
where I'm present enough to function
but absent enough not to feel too much.

It's a clean kind of disappearing.

no mess. no drama.
just small, daily decisions
to not be fully there.

sometimes I wonder
if this is how people slowly become strangers to themselves,
not through one big mistake,
but through a thousand quiet permissions.

stay.
adjust.
endure.

repeat.

and one day you look at your life
and there's nothing technically wrong with it,
except you're not in it anymore.

I don't think i'm sad.
I think i'm just, gone in a way
that no one can point out.

not even me, most days.