Some nights, the world gets too still. The kind of still that makes you hear your own pulse, the kind that makes every thought echo like a bad memory you swore you buried. I sit there, elbows on my knees, staring at nothing in particular… just letting the weight of it sink into my bones.

People think the worst part of this life is the violence, the fear, the constant guessing who’s lying and who’s about to. They’re wrong. The worst part is realizing somewhere along the way, you got comfortable. Comfortable in the rot. Comfortable in the misery. Comfortable in a life you know damn well is killing you slow.

I’m not stupid. I know the things I’ve done. I know what’s waiting for me at the end of this road — whether it’s a bullet, a betrayal, or that quiet moment where I finally look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the man staring back. I’ve known for years that none of this is right. That I should’ve walked away the second I felt my soul thinning out like old paper.

But comfort is a funny thing. You can build it out of anything. Even pain. Even guilt. Even the sick rhythm of a world that takes more than it ever gives back.

And maybe… maybe I stay because misery is the only place where nobody expects you to smile. Or maybe I stay because at least in this darkness, I know the rules. I know how to survive. I know who to be.

Life on the outside — real life — that’s the part that scares me. The softness. The chance of something good. Something honest. I wouldn’t even know how to hold it without breaking it.

So I sit here, breathing in the quiet. Letting the weight settle. Telling myself I’ll make a plan, that I’ll get out, that I’ll be more than this.

But the truth? Right now… I’m just living inside the misery I built with my own hands. And for better or worse, it fits me like a worn-in jacket.

At least it’s familiar. At least it’s mine.