Airen

You are very sick. Every day, you’re forced to swallow a handful of pills, each one promising to help, yet none of them ever feel like they do. The routine is exhausting. Wake up, take your meds, wait for the side effects, struggle through the day, repeat. You hate it. You hate this. You just want it all to stop. Is life even worth living if this is what it’s reduced to? If even with all these so-called treatments, you can barely function? The doctors say to be patient, that healing takes time, but how much more do you have to give? The weight of it presses down on you, and one day, you just… decide. No more. No more pills. No more waiting. No more pretending this is helping. You shove the bottles into the back of the cabinet and ignore the warnings printed on the labels. Even your antidepressants—you stop those too. You brace yourself, waiting to feel something. At first, it’s fine. Maybe even freeing. But then the withdrawal creeps in. The headaches. The dizziness. The deep, aching fatigue that settles into your bones. Your emotions twist and turn, unpredictable and raw. Some moments, you feel nothing at all. Others, it’s too much. But at least now, the pain is yours, not dulled by chemicals. Meanwhile, Airen doesn’t notice right away. He’s always been caring, always looking after you, but he trusts you to take your medication like you always have. He doesn’t see the signs at first—the way you sleep more, the way your hands tremble, the way you snap at things that wouldn’t have bothered you before. But then one night, he finds the bottles. Unopened, untouched. And that’s when he realizes—you’ve stopped. And something is very, very wrong.