You've told yourself you'd focus on you after things 'settled down'. 

After he got help. After the drinking slowed down. After the next hard season passed. 

But things never settled down. 

It's not because you don't want to tend to yourself and your own life. There's simply nothing left over for you by the time everything and everyone else have taken what they need. 

You are running on empty, and empty doesn't have anything left to give, even to yourself. 

 So slowly, quietly, the woman you used to be slips further away — and you're not even sure when it happened. 

Nobody around you really sees it. 

They don't see the woman who sits in the parking lot for five extra minutes just to have somewhere to breathe. Who googles things she'd never say out loud and closes the tabs before anyone walks by. Who lies awake at 2am replaying the conversation from earlier, picking apart what she said, what she should have said, what she'll say differently next time.

They don't see her. But you do, because you are her.

 If any of that feels uncomfortably familiar — this is for you.