How To Be Dead

Eventually you run out of reasons to fight. The old excuses just don't cut it anymore and you give up.
You don't mean to give up, or maybe you do, I don't know. It just sort of seems to happen.
One minute you're so ready to beat this thing, to finally start your life,
then the next minute you simply want to fall back into the abyss.
No struggle, no battle, just simple resignation.
Fighting is hard,
it's exhausting.
And it doesn't seem to get any easier with time.
In fact it only seems to get harder.
As you begin to realize just how messed up you are, you wonder how you'll ever un-tangle yourself.
To make it worse, you have no idea how the mess was created.
It seems like one day you just woke up and were lost.
The reality is, though, you were drifting a long time before that.
You kept drifting further and further until one day you woke up and realized you were too far out to ever return.
Now, you look at the pieces of yourself lying scattered on the floor and can't remember how they ever fit together in the first place.
You realize that no matter how hard you try, it's always going to be a battle.
No matter how far forward you move, one let up and you'll be back at the beginning.
You must keep a constant vigil or risk slipping,
making all your hard work mean nothing.
You're not fighting an external enemy that you can simply vanquish.
You're fighting yourself.
And you can't escape.
So you stop trying.
You stop fighting because it's just too tiring.
You've long ago forgotten how to laugh, how to love, how to live.
But you know all too well how to be forgotten, how to disappear, and ultimately how to be dead
because although you've been alive for 17 years, you long ago stopped living.