I dunno if this counts as like, a confession exactly? Or just me being a screwed-up idiot. I feel like it’s probably the second one. I’m like, really embarrassed to even type this out, my hands are kinda shaking. But I gotta say it somewhere, I guess. It’s about these pills. Not like, street pills or anything, they’re my mom’s. She had surgery last year, and they gave her these strong ones, and she only used a few. They were just sitting in her medicine cabinet, kinda forgotten. And I took some. I know, I KNOW, it’s like, super messed up. I didn’t take a lot, just a few, and I put them in this old mint tin – a really pretty one actually, it has a cool art deco lady on it – and I hide it in my locked desk drawer at work. It’s just… work is so much sometimes, you know? Like, it’s not even a bad job, it’s just the same thing every single day. I’m a senior admin assistant, which sounds important but it just means I answer phones and file stuff for people who actually DO important things. I’m only seventeen. I should be like, painting or drawing, that’s what I wanna do, that’s what I’m GOOD at. But my parents are always like, “you gotta be PRACTICAL, honey,” and we don’t have a lot of money so I took this job. And the shifts are SO long. Sometimes I’m there for like, ten hours, and by the end, my head is just buzzing and everything feels really loud and I just wanna climb under my desk and cry. And the pills… they just kinda make everything quiet for a bit. Not like, high or anything, just… quiet. My brain stops yelling at me. I hate that I do it. I feel like such a piece of crap. I’m not addicted, I swear. I don't do it every day, just when I feel like I'm gonna actually scream if I hear one more phone ring or have to print one more report. I just don’t know how else to get through these shifts sometimes. Everyone thinks I’m so calm and put-together at work, but inside I’m just… dying. And if anyone ever found that tin in my drawer, I would probably just run away and never come back. I don’t know what to do. I just feel so ashamed. This is stupid, I know. I just needed to say it out loud even if it’s just to like, the internet.