“I give up,” are words used when you’ve had an argument with a friend because she won’t see things from your perspective. These are words used when you realise that a particular diet or sport just isn’t for you. However, when you give up on yourself you don’t declare it to the world. When you give up on yourself the last bit of hope you had disappears and you don’t know what to do with yourself.

The people around you notice and it becomes a five-minute conversation before they forget. You stop drowning in your tears but rather face the seemingly pessimistic reality: there is nothing to live for.

You don’t contemplate suicide yet but you want to run away, run away from the things that bother you, reality and life as a whole. “Running away from your problems?” they ask. “That’s a race you’ll never win.” They tell you to face your problems, come to terms with them.

What if you’ve faced them so many times they stopped being problems but things that bring you down every day of your sorry life? “Maybe if things were different…” but they aren’t, are they? This is life and you have to deal with it. When you change into the person you once thought worst to be, that’s when you know you’ve given up on yourself.