09:03:25
Holding it together until the cracks start to show.
Standing tall when even breathing feels heavy.
Smiling like someone’s pulling my cheeks up with invisible strings.
Lying, again and again, until even I start believing it.
Screaming pain, buried under loud laughter or a face that says don’t ask.
I have to. I have to.
The words loop in my mind, a silent chant of endurance,
a rhythm I have memorized too well.
Wearing the “nothing bothers me mask”, the “I don’t care mask”, switching them out like armor, a shield against everything I can’t say.
Behind every “I am great” is a quiet, aching “I don’t even know who I am anymore”.
I don’t want the pity in their eyes.
So, I say less. Measure my words. Cut away anything that might expose me.
Because I know I’ll be misunderstood.
Because I don’t want their sympathy to morph into something else:
Something that stirs hope. Something that tricks me into believing someone is listening, someone understands.
I tell myself even if people could read minds, they still wouldn’t get it. Wouldn’t feel the weight, the drowning, the years pressed into my bones. Wouldn’t understand how a single second can hold everything I’ve tried to forget.
I can’t expect people to cry with me.
Can’t expect them to understand, to not judge.
So I fake it. Faking it till I can’t.
Perfecting the act. The nods, the shrugs, the well-timed laughs. Making it easy for them to believe the lie, easier than explaining the truth, the part of me I can’t even put into words.
Because explaining means reliving. And reliving means breaking all over again.
And I can’t afford to break.
It’s better this way. Safer.
People like emotions that fit into boxes. Sad, but not too sad. Hurting, but not broken. Lost, but not beyond saving.
But I don’t fit into their boxes.
I am fine enough to not raise questions. Broken enough to feel every second of it.
And that’s where I stay.
Somewhere between okay and not. Between existing and actually living.
A walking contradiction. A quiet disaster.
And no one, not even me, knows how long I can keep this up.
People like emotions that fit into boxes. Sad, but not too sad. Hurting, but not broken. Lost, but not beyond saving.
These were the lines that were the best for me .
That- that was stunningly beautiful. It’s relatable down to the core really. I mean I’m jealous how can you grasp the concept of writing the piece all together. The transition had me thinking stuff I usually don’t think about honestly. The way you describe adapting and then faking it out, somewhere deep down made me realise that at micro levels we all do it. We all do it for people we care about , but we do it altogether for our own satisfaction, our own sanity until we realise deep down how wrong it is.
Now I realise that we write poetry altogether to just escape reality, to show in ways people consider art, but deep down we know how the piece, how each word echoes through us.
Great work! Keep writing these thought provoking pieces.