Despair

Despair

The kind of misery that makes breathing feel like labor.
I don’t remember waking up.
All I remember is opening my eyes and realizing I never really slept. My face felt stiff from dried tears, my throat sore, my head pounding like there were stones jammed inside it.
My homework was spread across the floor—sketchpads, printed photos, pens with no caps, half-erased drafts. It looked like a battlefield.
Maybe it was.
I crawled toward my desk, feet dragging, hair tangled, shirt wrinkled like I’d been sleeping on it instead of wearing it. I didn’t even bother checking the mirror. I could feel it anyway—the swollen eyes, the gray skin, the way my lips trembled without permission.
I looked… exactly how I felt.
Disheveled.
Detached.
Done.
But school deadlines didn’t care if your whole life was burning.
So I quietly sat down, picked up my canvas practice sheet, and tried to sketch the outlines for my final requirement. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. I pressed hard, then too soft, then I ripped the paper accidentally. I stared at the tear like it was the end of the world.
Then I cried.
Not loudly.
Just the kind of crying that leaks, slow and constant, like your soul sprung a leak.
I wiped my face and kept working.
Work. Cry.
Work. Cry.
Over and over, until the hours blurred like watercolor.
It didn’t help that every time I looked at my phone, there were messages—but none from the person I wanted.
Cole hadn’t called.
Or maybe I didn’t want to know if he had.
My chest tightened again.
I stood up to breathe, walked to the sink, splashed water on my face, looked at myself—
—and didn’t recognize the girl staring back.
My hair was sticking in odd directions, my shirt had paint stains from two days ago, and my eyes… god, they looked empty. Like someone turned the lights off inside.
I grabbed my bag anyway.
I forced myself to school.
Students whispered as I passed, but I was numb enough not to care. My steps felt mechanical, like a puppet being dragged by invisible strings. Every sound echoed too loudly. Every light felt harsh. Every breath felt like it took effort.
Then I saw Sue at the hallway.
Normally she’d wave first, beam like she always does. But this time—
she froze.
Turned away.
Pretended to check her phone.
A tiny sting hit my chest.
I whispered her name. “Sue?”
She didn’t look back.
I didn’t chase her.
I didn’t have the energy.
Inside the classroom, I sat in the corner seat and continued working on my requirements. My fingers were cold, my posture slouched, my breathing uneven.
I kept telling myself:
Finish this. Just finish this. Don’t fall apart here. Not here.
But every line I drew reminded me of the ones I’d burned.
Every brushstroke felt like dragging a wound open.
Every movement made me aware of how tired I was.
Tired of crying.
Tired of lying.
Tired of pretending I was okay.
Tired of losing everything and everyone.
My professor walked by once, paused, then gently said, “Are you alright, Laura?”
I nodded without looking up. “Just tired.”
But the truth was sitting heavy in my throat:
I was breaking.
Quietly.
Slowly.
Completely.
I worked like that the whole day—crying silently, wiping tears before they hit the page, pushing through the haze in my chest. My world felt muted, like someone turned the volume down on life.
And still, I kept going.
Because stopping meant feeling.
And I couldn’t afford that.
Not today. Not right now. Not when everything I loved was falling apart—
and I was falling apart with it.
And yet… she keeps going.
Even if it’s repetitive, even if she’s exhausted, even if she no longer knows why—she still finishes everything. Forcing herself. Half-hearted. Even when her heart is out of place.
The days pass like copies of each other.
Same waking up, same crying, same quiet walk to school, same forced smile so no one asks questions.
The pain doesn’t change.
The schedule doesn’t change either.
Cry. Class. Deadline. Cry. Sleep.
And tomorrow, she’ll do it again.
There are nights she can’t breathe, but she still needs to finish her layouts.
There are mornings her eyes are swollen, but she still has to submit.
There are afternoons she wants to walk out, but she still attends class.
“You’re strong,” people say.
They don’t know that sometimes… what they see isn’t strength—it’s survival.
But even so, even when she can’t explain how she’s still functioning, one thing is certain:
She shows up.
Not perfect.
Not fully okay.
But present.
Sometimes tears fall suddenly while she’s painting.
Sometimes her voice cracks in the middle of a report.
Sometimes she just laughs at herself because why does she have to cry in the hallway?
But after each moment—she still stands.
She wipes her eyes.
She puts on an “I’m okay.”
Even if it’s not true.
And through that—through showing up while broken—something is slowly happening that she doesn’t even notice:
She is becoming stronger than the girl she was before the heartbreak.
Not healed.
Not whole.
But tougher.
Still fighting.

3RD POV 
Cole tried to reach out—again and again—but Laura was closed off, locked in her own darkness.
He saw her once in the hallway, shoulders hunched, hair messy like she hadn’t brushed it that morning, eyes red as if she cried the whole night. She didn’t even notice him at first. She was staring at the ground, clutching her sketch folder like it was the only thing holding her together.
“Faye,” he said softly.
She froze. Not because she was glad.
But because she didn’t have the strength to pretend.
She turned her head slightly—just enough to acknowledge him, but not enough to show her face.
“What is it, Cole?”
Her voice was thin, empty, like it had been drained dry.
“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know how bad things were. I didn’t know about your dad—”
“It’s fine.”
She said it quickly, almost too quickly.
Not because it was fine, but because she didn’t want to talk about it.
Cole stepped closer. “Faye, you don’t have to go through this alone.”
She swallowed, eyes fixed somewhere past him, somewhere farther than anyone could reach.
“I don’t want to talk,” she whispered. “Not right now.”
“But I’m here,” Cole insisted. “Just let me—”
“Cole.”
She finally looked at him.
And it wasn’t anger he saw.
It was devastation.
A quiet, indescribable kind of sorrow that made his chest tighten.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t handle anyone right now. Not even you.”
He felt something in him break at those words—because out of everyone, he wanted to be the one she could lean on.
But she wasn’t leaning on anyone.
She was falling.
And he couldn’t catch her because she kept stepping back.
He reached for her hand—hesitant, gentle.
She pulled away like the touch burned.
“I’m tired,” she whispered. “I’m really… really tired, Cole.”
He didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t know how to fix something this deep.
How to heal someone who had stopped believing she deserved comfort.
“I’m worried about you,” he confessed.
Laura gave the smallest, saddest smile.
“Don’t be. I’m just… surviving.”
She walked past him, slowly, like every step weighed something.
Like grief was tied to her ankles.
Cole stood there, frozen, watching her go.
And for the first time, he realized—
There are moments when love isn’t enough to pull someone out of the darkness.
Sometimes, you can only watch them drown, hoping they’ll reach for you before it’s too late.

Cole tried again the next day.
And the day after that.
But Laura had turned into a ghost—someone who moved through hallways without seeing anything, someone who sat in class without hearing a word. Her world had narrowed into a single thing:
Endure.
Finish what needs to be finished.
Then collapse later.
She woke up with swollen eyes.
Went to school with the same clothes twice because she forgot to do laundry.
Ate almost nothing except coffee and whatever snack Vienna forced into her hands.
But even Vienna was kept at arm’s length.
Laura simply sat through everything—group works, critiques, deadlines—with this empty expression, like her mind was stuck somewhere she couldn’t return from.
Her professors noticed.
Her classmates whispered.
Sue avoided her like Laura carried a disease.
And Cole… Cole watched helplessly.
Sometimes others saw him following her from a distance, trying to catch her after class. But every time he got close, she either slipped away or gave him a quiet, fragile “not today.”
So he stopped pushing.
Instead he watched from afar—her shaking hands as she tried to finish her plates, the way she blinked too long as if holding back tears, the way she kept a bottle of water and tissue in her bag because she would suddenly cry in the bathroom between classes.
But she kept going.
Even when she stumbled.
Even when her eyes were too puffy to hide.
Even when her sketch lines turned shakier every day.
One night in the library, she broke down—silently, carefully, head down on the table so no one would hear. Cole saw her from the next aisle. Her shoulders trembled for ten straight minutes. She kept wiping her eyes, trying not to ruin the drawings she was coloring.
He wanted to walk to her.
Wanted to kneel beside her.
Wanted to take the damn pen from her shaking hand and say, “Stop. You need rest.”
But she kept going, because stopping felt like failing.
So he did the only thing he could:
He left a bottle of water and a pack of tissues on the corner of her desk when she wasn’t looking.
Laura saw it.
She stared at it for a long, long minute.
Her lips trembled once.
Then she kept working.
Like she didn’t deserve even that small kindness.
And Cole watched from the shadows, his heart breaking in slow motion—because it wasn’t anger pushing her away.
It was despair.
The kind that swallows a person whole.