my pain doesn’t have to be “presentable”. my pain that petrifies me beyond my basic human needs is not something you can just hear and comment on at any given time, deciding whether it’s reasonable or not.
you hear me. you hear that I only get 6 hours of sleep a week. and suddenly, the fact that I can’t sleep stops being newsworthy. you stop asking, or worse, you ask with a voice that’s already decided it’s too much.
you want it polished. poetic. maybe something that sounds like healing. but I’m not healing.
I’m just here. trying not to throw up from the nicotine in my lungs and the grief in my spine.
the tobacco I smoke is stuck in my throat constantly.
my body is desperately begging not to end up dead,
yet my soul desperately wants to perish.
some days I think the most honest thing about me is the ashtray by my bed. and no, I don’t want to rephrase it. I don’t want to smile after.
I don’t want to make it sound beautiful so it fits inside your comfort zone. pain doesn’t come in sentences that wrap up neatly.
sometimes it’s a week of rotting insides.
sometimes it’s lying on the bathroom floor because the air in the kitchen is too judgmental.
sometimes it’s being too tired to shower but not tired enough to pass out.
and sometimes it’s typing all this out just to delete it anyway.
because even this feels like something someone will look at and say,
“okay, but have you tried xyz?”
*artwork by rosioire
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