How much energy it can take to get up in the morning
How hard it is to sleep at night
The struggle to take care of yourself
How much you have to hurt people around you just to feel better
How little things can make you happy
How interpreting things make them worse more often than not
How your heart will ache when it’s too full
How your heart will hurt when it’s empty
How a stone heart will only last so long
How being kind and being mean can both be defense
Why tears don’t come when you need them
Why they never leave when you don’t
Why love isn’t always what you see on tv
Why you struggle to be who you want to be
Why when the earth says you can do it you say not today
Why when you say you can the earth says no
How many times you haven’t wanted to wake up
How many times you haven’t wanted to sleep
How many times you’ve feared for your life on a perfectly normal day
Why you question if you’ll make it through the year or month or week or day
Why you think it doesn’t matter if you stop breathing
How much you wonder about how long it will take before you can go a day, a week, a month, a year without that pain
How much you’ll be able to survive that pain
How you feel like nobody else feels that way
How you feel too scared to voice it
Why you don’t understand that you’re not alone
Why you don’t just get help
How difficult it is to get help
How difficult it is to even ask for help
How easy it is to help others when all you want to do is cry
How difficult it is to hold back tears
Why it’s so impossible to stop holding back tears
How one bad thing could make it worse
How many good things it would take to make it better
How difficult it is to truly feel loved
Because anyone who doesn’t feel it, who has never felt it, doesn’t love someone who feels it, will never be able to know.
Even if they have felt it, or loved someone who felt it, there isn’t a guarantee they understand.
There’s no guarantee with any of it, the breaking points, the amount of love you can feel, the amount of bad things that can happen before you can’t feel at all, when you’ll be able to breathe again, when it will end, whether it will end through healing or not, and how long until this feeling goes away or returns.
There’s no guarantee you’ll be guided through any of it, there won’t always be someone holding you through it all. You’ll change because of it, you’ll need protection and a guiding light when there’s no one there so sometimes you’ll need to be strong when you shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be a part of growing up, but sometimes there are no other options. Sometimes there are but the fact that those doors need someone else’s hands to open them leave them impossible or scary to even try.
I grew stronger when I shouldn’t have had to. I’m in a rut where I don’t feel comfortable asking for help at all. I feel guilty asking for things that make me happy and I feel terrible when I don’t sacrifice something I like for someone else’s happiness.
I know there are other people out there who probably share these feelings with me, and who have it worse than me. I wish I was alone in this because I would sacrifice my happiness and comfort for the world, I felt like I had to and I still kinda do.
I’m lucky I’ve never wanted to end my life, I’m lucky I don’t want to hurt myself, I’m lucky I’m getting out of a toxic environment. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay, it just means I’m on my path to getting better, and that my path isn’t as difficult as others. I hope I can help someone else out there through their path even if it’s just a little.
Know you’re not alone, and that even though it’s difficult to ask for help, it’s not impossible. Online, in person, anonymously, shouting your name to the sky, there’s some way you should be able to cry out for help. And sometimes it is a gamble if someone hears you or not, but when a good person hears you, they’ll try to help you through this.
