Sometimes it looks like I’m ignoring people. Like I stopped caring. Like I don’t want to talk. Like I saw the message and decided you weren’t important enough to answer. But the truth is, sometimes life gets so heavy that even the smallest things start feeling impossible. You wake up already exhausted. You stare at your phone knowing there are people you should respond to, people you love, people you genuinely miss… but you just don’t have the energy to explain what’s going on inside your head. So you disappear a little. And the hardest part is that sometimes you don’t even physically disappear. You’re still showing up. Still going to work. Still posting. Still laughing when someone makes a joke. Still having conversations. But mentally, you’re somewhere else entirely. You’re sitting in a room full of people while fighting something nobody in that room can see. Grief will do that to you. Depression will do that to you. Life will keep moving around you while part of you feels completely frozen. People are talking, laughing, making plans, living normally, and you’re just trying to make it through another day without completely falling apart. Sometimes I don’t answer because I genuinely don’t know what to say. “How have you been?” I don’t know how to answer that without either lying or telling you way more than you were probably prepared to hear. So I say nothing. And then one day becomes three. Three becomes a week. Eventually so much time has passed that you feel guilty for disappearing, and that guilt makes reaching back out even harder. Please understand that silence doesn’t always mean someone stopped loving you. Distance doesn’t always mean they stopped caring. Sometimes the people who disappear are the ones fighting the hardest battles just to remain here at all. So if I’ve been quiet lately, distant, forgetful, or even standing right beside you while somehow feeling a million miles away… I’m not ignoring the world. I’m just trying to find my way back to it. ❤️‍🩹 - @shastin24