Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Keane
Day Twenty-One
Three weeks. Twenty-one days in this place, and every one of them has chipped away at whatever was left of me. I’m hollowed out. Stripped bare. This kind of exhaustion isn’t something you sleep off—it seeps into your bones, your skin, your soul. Therapy doesn’t just dredge up the past; it drags you under with it, makes you relive it. Makes you feel it all over again. Every mistake, every cruel twist of fate, every goddamn regret. It’s not just that I remember them—I’m drowning in them.
And my body? It’s a stranger to me now. There was a time when movement felt like freedom. Walking, running, even the simple act of standing upright—it all came effortlessly, a thoughtless rhythm I never appreciated. Now every step is a negotiation; every breath a confrontation with the betrayal of my own flesh. I can’t even sit without feeling the echoes of what used to be, like some cruel phantom is whispering in my ear, reminding me of everything I’ve lost.
Then there’s the silence. God, the silence. It’s deafening. It creeps in when the lights go out, when the world goes quiet, and all I have left are my thoughts. My failures stretch out like an endless hall of mirrors, each reflection uglier than the last. The questions—they don’t stop. They coil around my brain like vines, squeezing tighter and tighter. What if this is it? What if I can’t put the pieces back together? What if the best version of me is already gone, and this is all that’s left—a shell, broken and useless?
They say healing is a process. A journey. But this doesn’t feel like healing. It feels like unraveling. Like I’m picking at the seams of everything I thought I was, only to find that there’s nothing underneath.
And yet, there’s this flicker—tiny, barely there, but enough to keep me breathing. The thought that maybe tomorrow might be different. Maybe I’ll wake up and feel something besides this ache, this emptiness. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe this is just who I am now.
Broken. Waiting. Wondering if there’s any way back.