14/09/2026
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ | ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐จ๐จ๐ฆ ๐
๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ซ ๐๐๐ฌ ๐๐จ ๐๐จ๐ฅ๐
[๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐: ๐๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ด๐ฆ๐ญ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ข๐ณ๐ฎ, ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ท๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ด]
I have become good at finding substitutes.
People like to imagine survival as a clean, decisive moment: a hand reaching for another hand, a phone call made at the right time. They do not often talk about the hours before that moment, when staying alive can feel less like choosing life and more like choosing which pain you can tolerate. They do not talk about how you would rather ruin tomorrow than risk what might happen tonight.
When I promised myself I would never end up on the bathroom floor again, I expected some sort of relief to follow, a clean little break between the person I had been and the person I was supposed to become, but nothing in me changed just because I had decided it should. Still, the nights remained long, and my thoughts, which had once been easier to outrun, simply waited for me to run out of places to go.
So I found other things to fill the space they left behind: ci******es burning down between my fingers while I watched the ash lengthen and threaten to fall, alcohol warming my throat and turning the corners of the room soft, anything I could swallow or inhale or lose myself in for long enough that my own mind became background noise. From the start, there was never any pretending that these things were good for me. I knew what the smoke was doing to my lungs. I knew what alcohol did to mornings, how it left the room too bright and my head too heavy. I knew that none of this was recoveryโI was only finding smaller ways to hurt myself, ways that felt easier to explain and easier to hide.
I only reached for those things when the whole house was sunk into that strange, airless quiet that only exists when everyone else is asleep. I liked those hours because they asked nothing of me. I did not have to explain why I was awake, why my hands were trembling, why I kept checking the time as though I were waiting for something I did not want to arrive. I only had to keep myself occupied until whatever had been scratching at the inside of my skull grew quieter.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I would watch the last orange fleck at the end of the cigarette collapse into gray ash and realize, almost with surprise, that morning was beginning to seep through the curtains, turning the darkness a weak shade of blue, and that I had made it through another night without doing what I had been thinking about doing. That was how I started keeping scoreโnot by how well I was living, but by what I had managed not to do. Another night without scarring myself, another morning with my feet still touching the floor, and another day I could look at the clock and think, quietly, ๐ฃ๐ค๐ฉ ๐ฉ๐ค๐ฃ๐๐๐๐ฉ.
The thought comes back without announcing itself. Sometimes it is only a sensation, a faint restlessness beneath the skin, like an itch you cannot quite reach. It would come quietly, usually when the night had thinned into those strange hours when even the street outside seemed to have forgotten itself, and I would feel it before I could name it: the same unsettling feeling I had spent months trying to smother with anything else that could make an hour disappear. It was never a voice telling me exactly what to do; it was simply a possibility, sitting somewhere at the back of my mind and waiting for me to notice it.
๐๐๐๐ฃ ๐ ๐ฌ๐ค๐ช๐ก๐ ๐ง๐๐ข๐๐ข๐๐๐ง ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐ค๐ค๐ข. I remember the fluorescent light, that sickly white light that makes every surface look colder than it is, humming above me with the steady indifference of something that had no idea what was happening beneath it. I remember the tiles, pale and unforgiving, and the silence of the house beyond the door. I remember how absurdly ordinary it wasโit was just a bathroom floor, something I had walked across hundreds of times without ever thinking about it. Yet that night, it felt almost startlingly alive against me, as though the cold itself had reached up and reminded me that I was still capable of feeling anything at all.
The body is strange. The mind can spend hours convincing you that there is no point in tomorrow, that you have already wasted whatever chances you were given, that all the effort it took to stay has only led you back to the same miserable place. The body, meanwhile, continues with its small, stubborn business. It shivers, it gets hungry, it grows tired. It wakes to sunlight pressing through the curtains even when you would rather remain asleep. It keeps breathing without asking whether the person attached to it has earned another breath. My body carried me through that long night on the cold bathroom floor, and eventually, I would have to learn how to carry myself.
For a long time, I thought that the only reason I stayed is because something inside me was too stubborn to stop. I had begun to believe that I needed to hurt myself a little in order not to hurt myself completely. I began to wonder what staying alive would look like if I did not have to hurt myself at all.
So I started with small betrayals of the habits that had carried me this far. I left the cigarette unfinished on the windowsill, I poured the rest of the drink down the sink, I began sitting through the hours I used to numb, discovering that the silence did not become kinder simply because I was sober enough to hear it. Some nights I still failed, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, the reason I was fighting began to change. At first, I stayed because I was afraid of that bathroom, because I remembered the cold and did not want to feel it again. Those reasons mattered, but I realized I did not want my life to be a list of things I had to endure simply to make it to the next morning.
I want a life where I could fail without immediately deciding that failure meant I had to disappear. I want to be allowed to change my mind, to outgrow the person I had been, to become someone I did not recognize yet without feeling like I had wasted all the years it took to get there. I want to have terrible days and wake up the next morning without treating them as evidence that I was beyond saving. I want to be unfinished, uncertain, struggling, and still here. ๐ ๐ฌ๐๐ฃ๐ฉ ๐ฉ๐ค ๐ก๐๐ซ๐. Somewhere beneath everything, after everything, I finally wanted to.
There are still nights when the old feeling returns. I still know the shape of it, how quickly a thought can turn into a temptation when I am tired enough, lonely enough, convinced enough that nothing I have done matters. But I am beginning to understand that progress does not disappear simply because I struggle again. I am learning that staying alive cannot always mean finding something to numb the hours until they pass; sometimes it means sitting with the hours exactly as they are and trusting that they will pass anyway.
Sobriety and staying alive have always felt like the same battle to meโboth ask me to sit with the same wounds without letting them become an ending. I had stopped doing one thing, but I had not stopped wanting to escape; I had only found quieter ways to disappear from myself for a while. I was not really sober until I could feel the weight of my own thoughts and still choose to remain, until staying alive was no longer something I had to bargain for with another kind of hurt. I am not sober until I ๐๐ข sober.
When I think about that bathroom floor again, I no longer think only about how badly I wanted everything to stop. I think about everything I want that would have ended with me: the life where I could fail without immediately deciding that failure meant I had to disappear, where I could change my mind, outgrow the person I had been, and become someone I did not recognize yet.
Yet, after all of this mess I have put myself into, I think I am beginning to understand that I do not want to live for the relief anymore. Somewhere beneath all the noise, all the smoke, all the nights I have spent trying to feel less, there is still a part of me that wants to be here. And when the thought comes back, as I know it will, I will remember that nightโnot because of how badly I wanted everything to end, but because somewhere beneath that wanting, there was still something in me that did not.
I will always remember that the bathroom floor was so cold. ๐ผ๐ฃ๐ ๐ ๐๐ข ๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ก๐ก ๐ฌ๐๐ง๐ข.
Written by Eileen Nicole Lapiz
Art by Aibon Shaine Mamalo
![๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ | ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐จ๐จ๐ฆ ๐
๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ซ ๐๐๐ฌ ๐๐จ ๐๐จ๐ฅ๐[๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐: ๐๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ด๐ฆ๐ญ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ข๐ณ๐ฎ, ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ท๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ด]I have become good at fin...](https://img3.medioq.com/314/484/122139412593144846.jpg)
