My name is Sarah, and I'm disappearing. Not dramatically, not all at once, but gradually, like a photograph left in the sun. Every yes I give takes a piece of me away, and every no I swallow makes me smaller. I can see it happening. I know exactly what's wrong.

But I can't save myself.

I'm like a surgeon who can operate on everyone except themselves, watching my own life bleed out while being too afraid to pick up the scalpel. The worst part isn't that I'm trapped – it's that I'm the one who built the cage, and I keep adding bars even as I suffocate inside it.

Tomorrow I'll wake up and say yes to more things I don't want to do for people who'll never love me as much as I need them to. I'll smile and nod and accommodate and adjust until there's nothing left of me but the echo of other people's expectations.

I'll hate myself for it while I'm doing it, fully aware that I'm choosing this, fully complicit in my own erasure.

It always starts so innocently. Someone needs help on an assignment, I'm smart enough to help. Someone else needs an escort to the market, and I wasn't doing anything that Saturday anyway. A coworker was overwhelmed with their project deadline, and I'm good with spreadsheets.

Each favor feels reasonable. Each yes seems kind. But somewhere along the way, I become the person everyone calls when they need something fixed, handled, or endured on their behalf.

I am the human equivalent of a Swiss Army knife, always available, always useful, never truly appreciated for what I am, just for what I can do.

My ex-boyfriend, the one who cheated on me, who broke my heart so thoroughly I didn't eat for a week – texted me asking if I could help him move apartments.

Not just help.

Be the one to coordinate the whole thing because "you're so good at organizing stuff, and honestly, you're the only person I trust to make sure nothing gets damaged."

I stared at that message for an hour, feeling something that should have been rage but came out as a tired laugh. Here was a man who had told me I was "too needy" and "exhausting to be around," now asking me to spend my weekend hauling his belongings to the apartment he'd probably share with the woman he'd left me for.

The rational part of my brain was screaming. This was it – the perfect opportunity to practice that word I kept promising myself I'd learn.

"No."

Simple. Complete. Final.

Instead, I found myself typing: "Of course! What time should I be there?"

I sent it and then sat in my bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, genuinely wondering if I was having some kind of mental breakdown.

Who does this!?

Who helps their cheating ex-boyfriend move?

What kind of pathetic creature had I become?

But the alternative – him thinking I was bitter, him telling people I was petty, him not needing me anymore – felt worse than the humiliation of being his unpaid moving service.

I know I'm doing it. I can feel myself volunteering for things I don't want to do, making promises I can't keep, adding items to my mental to-do list that should be on someone else's.

"I'd be happy to help with that," while internally screaming, "NO, YOU WOULDN'T. YOU HATE THIS. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS AGAIN?"

But the alternative – disappointing someone, seeming selfish, being perceived as unhelpful – feels worse than slowly suffocating under the weight of everyone else's needs.

I know the difference between tired and depleted, between busy and overwhelmed, between helping and being used.

I can tell you exactly how many hours of sleep I need to function (eight) and how many I actually get (five, if I'm lucky). I know that the knot in my stomach isn't hunger – it's anxiety disguised as productivity.

But knowledge without action is just organized suffering.

I lie in bed at night, promising myself tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I'll set boundaries. Tomorrow I'll prioritize my own needs. Tomorrow I'll learn to say no without feeling like I need to justify my entire existence.

Then morning comes, and with it, the inevitable text messages, emails, and casual requests that chip away at my resolve like water wearing down stone.

"You're such a lifesaver," they say, and I smile like being the person everyone calls when their life is falling apart is some kind of compliment.

I have become addicted to being needed, even as it slowly kills me. I crave the temporary high of being indispensable, the brief moment of feeling valuable, even though I know it's hollow. They don't need Sarah the person – they need Sarah the service provider, Sarah the problem-solver, Sarah the human band-aid for their inconveniences.

When I'm not being useful, I don't know who I am. My entire sense of self has become wrapped up in what I do for others rather than who I am when no one is watching.

The breaking point isn't a single moment – it's a thousand tiny fractures that finally give way.

The first real collapse happened on a Tuesday. I was in my apartment after spending eight hours at the office finishing someone else's presentation, then rushing to help a friend shopping for her new born, then stopping by my mother's house to fix her computer. It was 11 PM, I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and I was so tired I couldn't remember the ride home.

I slid to the kitchen floor and sobbed. Snot ran into my mouth, hiccuping and choking on my own spit. My whole body shook like it was trying to throw me out of myself.

I couldn't stop.

Every breath was drowning.

The weight of all the things I'd promised to do, all the ways I'd failed to be enough, all the pieces of myself I'd given away – it crushed down on me until I couldn't breathe.

I thought about how easy it would be to just... stop. To not wake up tomorrow. To not have to disappoint anyone ever again because there would be no me left to disappoint. The thought was almost peaceful – finally, finally being released from this exhausting performance of being helpful.

I sat there for thirty minutes, snot running down my face, seriously considering whether anyone would even miss me or just miss what I did for them.

Then my phone buzzed.

A text from my manager: "Hey! I know it's late, but the Scott Project is due tomorrow and we need a report. You're always so good with those things. I'll owe you big time!"

I stared at that message through blurry eyes, still shaking from my breakdown.

I wiped my nose with my sleeve, took my laptop out of my back and sat by the desk.

"Sure! Will be done by morning"

I spent the next three hours trying to understand the project, and another three writing the report, while the me that needed saving was left to die on the kitchen floor.

When I was finally done at 6 AM, I sat on my kitchen floor and ate food from the day before...
No,the day before that,straight from the cooking pot,cried and snotted myself to an hour of sleep.

The cruelest irony is that in trying to make everyone else happy, I've made no one truly satisfied – least of all myself. I'm spread so thin that I'm giving everyone a diluted version of what I could offer. I'm the friend who's always there but never really present, the coworker who says yes to everything but excels at nothing, the person who's helpful but not particularly happy.

I've optimized my life for other people's comfort and my own misery.

And the most devastating realization? I don't remember who I was before I became who everyone needed me to be. My preferences, my interests, my desires – they've been buried under so many layers of accommodation that I'm not sure they still exist.

I am disappearing, one yes at a time, and I'm the only one who can stop it.

But stopping would require disappointing people. And disappointing people feels like dying.

So I continue to fade, to shrink, to accommodate myself out of existence, fully aware that I'm choosing this slow-motion suicide but unable to find the strength to choose differently.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up and do it all again.

Until there's nothing left of me but the echo of everyone I tried to keep happy.