85 - The Fear That Breathes Through Every Unread Message

The fear of the unknown has a way of finding me.

It slips in quietly every time my brother’s name appears on my screen.

In the first year after he left, 

that fear was suffocating.

I would let his messages sit unopened for days 

not out of neglect,

but because I was terrified of what waited behind the notification.

The chances were small, almost impossible,

that he had slipped back into the darkness he once lived in.

Smaller still that he might have tried to end everything again.

But even that tiny possibility was enough

to fold me into myself,

to curl my body into a foetal shape

as if I could shield my soul from whatever truth might be waiting.

It’s strange, isn’t it 

how you can care so deeply,

want nothing but the best for someone,

and still your mind whispers “what if”

until you freeze.

When he lived with me, 

the fear lived with us.

It sat beside me at the dinner table,

watched him from the corner of the room,

breathed the same air.

It was hard, but at least I could see him 

his face, his eyes, the small shifts in his voice

that told me whether he was sinking or holding on.

After he left, all I had were his words.

Cold text on a bright screen.

Every sentence became a code to decipher,

every pause a warning,

every delay an invitation for my mind

to play its own horror films.

And in those moments,

the past comes back like a shadow I never outran.

I remember the friend whose messages I left unopened

And let him slip out of this world

while I stayed silent.

Sometimes it feels like I’m standing

on the edge of making the same mistake again.

I know what fear is doing to me,

how it twists my thoughts,

how it freezes my hands

before I can even tap the screen.

But knowing doesn’t always stop it.

Some days I feel powerless

against a notification that carries both hope and danger.

The mind is cruelly talented at that 

twisting emotion, defying logic,

turning silence into catastrophe.

And even now, years later,

I still feel that same quiet dread

every time his name lights up my phone.