I never see your tears
I never see your fears
I never see you here
I can feel your grief
Heavy, beyond belief
A silence that suffocates
I try to placate the mood
But it’s like throwing water in the sea
It just adds to your misery
A misery so palpable I can feel it too
I see you use tissues, going through the box
Yet hiding your face
I never see the place your mind takes
“***, are you okay?”
You turn away
I recognize your stride
Of someone trying to hide
The sickness inside
I can never see your sadness
I can never know about your pain
And everything, you’ve always taught us,
Would happen again and again
“***, are you fine?”
Don’t keep yourself in line
Show me the hurt
What you think you must skirt around
Tears fall to the ground
But you still wipe them away
It’s not your fault
You never had a say
Chemical imbalance
Is what stole the day
I want to tell you that it will pass
That what you have will never last
But I’m too choked up on tears to say the words
I would turn from your problems too
If I didn’t know I couldn’t take them from you
Please, ***, just be okay
Get up to see another day
Fight through the grief for my greed
Battle the pain, because I need you
Please
***?
***
There is a silence that comes with being in a room with someone who struggles with their own mind and thoughts, and it’s not a silence I could ever describe. It’s worse than the one at funerals, because at least there is a peace in that silence. If I had any experience on a battlefield, I might describe it as one looking at the remnants of war, from the fresh corpses to the mementos and lives they used to carry. It’s heavy and thick and suffocating, yet it is nothing, I imagine, compared to what those who must constantly war feel. Be kind to the mentally ill, folks. Walk a lifetime in their shoes before you judge.
