I don't know if I'm alive.

God, are you there? It’s me...

I don’t know if you’re listening. Or if anyone is. Maybe I just want to believe someone’s out there—watching, waiting—like some cosmic joke. Or maybe I’ve lost my mind, talking to shadows and ghosts. But I need to get this out. Writing it down makes the silence feel less suffocating.

I've always found trouble, or maybe it found me. Since I was a kid, pain's been a companion. I remember the first time I bled from a real fight—blood mixing with dirt, my head ringing with screams I can still hear. At fourteen, I got stabbed. Left in an alley. I thought that was the end. But it wasn’t.

I made it.

At seventeen, I was stabbed again. Trying to prove something—maybe that I could survive anything. The blade cut deep, slicing through more than flesh. I remember the pain, the rush, the white ceiling of the ER, and the emptiness that came after. I walked away with another scar, another secret I didn’t want to tell.

At twenty, it was a bullet. It shattered ribs and reality. That’s when the pills started. Then needles. At first, it was peace. Then it was escape. Eventually, it became a cage. I floated through life, numb to everything, chasing silence but finding shadows.

Leanne tried to hold on. Through it all. Through the overdoses, the broken promises, the nights I vanished. She stayed until she couldn’t. Said I was a storm and she was tired of drowning. She left with tears in her eyes and a bag over her shoulder. Took the last of the light with her. The only light i'd ever known

I tried to quit. I really did. But addiction isn’t something you turn off. It whispers. It waits. And every day, I wondered if today would be the day I disappeared for good.

This morning, I sat by the creek. Just watched the water flow, like it knew how to keep moving when I couldn’t. I was trying to find something in the current—clarity, maybe. It's funny how misery loves company... and my old familiar friend effortlessly sniffer me out like a bloodhound.

Two guys walked. Quiet. Like clockwork they asked me for a light. I gave them one. We sat in silence until one pulled out a small bag. Fentanyl. I knew what it was. I knew what it could do.

But I didn’t care.

They offered a hit. One puff. Just enough to forget.

I took it.

The world unraveled. Sky tore open, colors twisted into something unnatural. The air thickened. I smelled something burnt and metallic—like blood left out in the sun. My limbs lost feeling. The world dimmed. Then darkness.

I don’t remember falling. Just cold. Wet ground. And silence.

They took everything. My phone. My bag. Left me there, a husk. No ambulance. No help.

Some old man walking his dog found me. Said I was blue, lips frozen, eyes open but gone. He called for help. Screamed until someone answered. Maybe that’s why I lived.

Ten minutes. That’s how long it took for the paramedics to get there. Ten minutes of floating in nothing.

They shocked me back. Lightning through the chest. I gasped awake in the ICU at Saint Paul’s. Machines whirred. Lights buzzed overhead. They said I was there for three months. A coma. Somewhere between life and whatever comes next.

Leanne was there when I opened my eyes. Her face pale, her hands shaking. But her eyes were distant. Like she was seeing someone she didn’t recognize. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry, my voice barely a whisper. She held my hand, but it didn’t feel the same.

Then I felt it. The scar. Back of my head. Smooth, unnatural. I touched it and felt metal. The nurses told me it was for oxygen. Some new emergency tech that apparently saved my life.

But it doesn’t feel like it saved me.

It feels like it changed me.

Since I woke, there’s been a smell I can’t shake. Faint but constant. Sweet. Rancid. Like death. The unmistakable scent. No soap or water makes it go away. And there’s this sound. Tinnitus, they say. But it isn’t just ringing. It pulses. Sometimes it’s a whisper. Sometimes it’s static. Sometimes it says my name.

I asked Leanne again about the scar. About the implant. She repeated the line: "It helps you breathe." But her eyes shifted. Like she knew more. Like she couldn’t say.

The nurses won’t look me in the eye. The doctors avoid my questions. My reflection feels wrong. My own movements feel delayed. Off.

My father used to visit every day. Now? Nothing. No word. No explanation. Just gone. When I asked, they said he moved. No contact. No address.

More lies.

I started to suspect something was wrong. Not just with me—with everything. The windows show the same sky every morning. The clouds move, but they loop. The beeping of the machines has a rhythm that doesn’t change. It feels... rehearsed.

I dream of wires. Needles. Voices behind masks. I wake with nosebleeds and hazy hours I can’t account for. Sometimes, I feel the implant buzz when I try to focus. Like it doesn’t want me to remember.

Sometimes, I wonder if I died that day and now i'm just some scientists puppet. Still drifting.

Other times, I wonder if the lack of oxygen to my brain dropped me down some psychosis fueled rabbit hole o paranoid delusion.

God, are you listening?

Because I don’t know what I am anymore.

I touch the back of my head and feel the metal. It throbs. Not with my heartbeat. With something else. It responds when I write. Like it knows. Like it’s watching.

Leanne stopped coming. They told me she couldn’t handle it. But I think it was something else. I think she saw too much. Heard something she wasn’t supposed to.

Now, it’s just me. The sound. The scent. The mirror that doesn’t quite follow my movements. The feeling that my thoughts aren’t entirely my own.

But I keep writing. Because these words still feel like mine. For now.

God, are you there?

Because I’m still here.

For now.