Title: The Weight Of Me Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands in a dimly lit room, restless, speaking to themselves or an invisible confidant. Their voice rises and falls with the tide of emotion.)
Monologue:
I can't… I can't stop thinking about it.
The mistake. The moment. The choice that shattered everything.
I replay it in my mind, over and over, and each time…
it feels worse, sharper, more permanent.
How could I have been so blind? So foolish?
And yet… even as I hate myself,
there's her face. Always her.
I chase it in every shadow, every whisper, every corner of this empty house.
I know it's wrong. I know it can never be.
But obsession… obsession doesn't care for reason.
Time… it mocks me. Every gray hair, every aching bone…
Death waits patiently at the edges of my life,
and I—I tremble at the thought of it.
What am I leaving behind? Who am I becoming as I fade,
as the world moves on without me?
Sometimes, I don't even recognize myself.
I argue with mirrors, I hear voices in empty rooms,
I see things that aren't there… or maybe they are.
Madness and clarity are hard to tell apart.
Am I losing my mind—or finally seeing the truth?
And the envy… it burns hotter than any fire.
I see them—loved, whole, unburdened—and I want… I want it.
Not just love, not just life, but the freedom to be unbroken.
Why them? Why not me? Why was I cursed with all this… this weight?
I am drowning in myself.
In guilt. In fear. In desire.
I am every mistake I ever made, every word I never said,
every heart I could not hold, every dream I let die.
And yet… I keep going.
I have to. Because what else is there, if not to survive the ruin I've made of me?
(Pauses, voice softer, almost a whisper.)
I am lost… but I am still here. And that… that is something, isn't it?