Of course, why wouldn’t my answer be my own life? Even thinking about it feels dreadful sometimes. It is a book that can be so hard to read because I don’t get to put it down when a chapter becomes too much. I don’t get to close the cover, leave it on a shelf, and come back when I feel better. I wake up inside the next page.
And some days, the weight of reading it is too much. My body feels heavy. My chest tightens. My mind begins writing things I never asked it to write, and all I want to do is drift away for a moment. Just disappear somewhere quiet. Somewhere the story cannot follow me. Because who would willingly keep reading a book when every chapter knows exactly where to hurt them?
The worst part is that I read it every day. Every single day. Again and again. It feels like the same chapters sometimes, just written differently. A thought comes back. A fear returns. Something happens and suddenly I’m re-reading an old page I thought I had already finished. What else am I supposed to do when I’m stuck inside the mind that keeps narrating the story?
Maybe that’s what I regret the most. Not that my life has chapters I don’t understand, but that I cannot skip them. I can’t turn forward to see whether things eventually make sense. I can’t read the ending to know whether everything I am feeling right now was worth surviving. I have to live one sentence at a time while another one is already being written.
And people can give you motivation. They can tell you to think positively. They can tell you that things will get better. Maybe they mean well. But there are moments when your own body feels like it is fighting against you, when your mind is louder than every piece of advice you have ever received, and positivity feels like someone handing you a bookmark when you are still trying to survive the chapter.
So yes, maybe I regret reading this book.
But I still read it.
Every morning.
Every second.
Every time a thought appears.
Every time I walk outside and wonder what chapter is about to be written next. Sometimes even leaving the house feels like turning a page without knowing what is waiting on the other side. Who will I meet? What will happen? What will my mind remember? What will I have to carry back home with me?
And eventually, I return to silence.
Silence, my worst enemy and somehow my favourite weapon. The place where I can finally stop explaining the story to everyone else. The place where nobody asks me to summarise a chapter I haven’t even understood myself. So I sit there and read.
Another day.
Another chapter.
Another sentence written without asking me first.
Maybe that’s the torture of it. Not knowing whether the story is getting better or whether I’ve simply become used to reading things that hurt me.
And perhaps one day I will understand why I kept turning the pages.
But right now, I have another question.
If you were trapped inside a book you regretted reading, wouldn’t you keep searching for the ending…
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