Help

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.