I’m lying here and it’s past midnight and I can hear that THUMP-thump sound and it’s just the blood moving through me and it’s all I can hear right now and it’s terrifying because it’s just this tiny thing keeping me from… not being here. And I just keep thinking about how fragile it is and how arbitrary and what if it just stops and then what? And that’s it. And it’s not even that I want it to stop but it’s the sheer precariousness of it all that’s getting to me. I’m usually so analytical and pragmatic and this is just raw animal fear and I don’t understand it. I work with high schoolers and they’re so full of life and so sure of everything and I just project this image of competence and confidence but inside I’m just this hollow shell of a person and I wonder if any of them can see it, if they can see the cracks in the facade. And everyone expects me to be married by now and have a family, my parents from back home keep hinting and my colleagues talk about their partners and their plans for the future and I just smile and nod and pretend like I’m on the same timeline but I’m just trying to get through the day, through this hour, through this breath. It feels like I’m just floating, untethered, and I’m supposed to be building something, a life, a career, a home but it all feels so pointless when you’re just one heartbeat away from… nothing. And it’s not depression, I don’t think. It’s not anhedonia or a pervasive low mood. It’s this specific terror about being. And I don’t know what to do with it. Or how to make it stop. I just want the thumping to stop. Or for it to not sound so LOUD.