How do I even begin to explain?
Some days are better than others,
And most days, I have good moments
But not good days.
It’s like my vocal cords are wrapping themselves around one another
Constricting my throat so tightly,
It’s hard to breathe.
Being stuck in a hole, and feeling powerless
As to your survival.
What else are you supposed to do but sit.
Wait, talk to the shadows who deem you worthy of conversation.
Because while you’re stuck in this hole, life, the world,
They go on without you.
And say, you manage to escape,
Freedom never felt so great, but,
You don’t know what to do with it.
You haven’t been around people in so long, that being swarmed scares you shitless,
Haven’t seen the light of the sun, that its rays are blinding.
So you go back, and jump into your hole.
Because your prison became your home,
You found understanding, and faced fears in that hole.
But the laws of life consist of nothing but regeneration.
You take one away to be replaced with the next one.
How do I explain how it feels to feel like I do, right now,
And secretly, all the time.
Seething. Desperately hopeful,
Wishing that others can change, that they’ll notice the dirt on your clothes from climbing into that hole every night, and climbing your way back up every morning,
Before the light reaches the windows of those you thought might notice,
But they don’t
No one ever does.
And that’s okay, I’ve mastered slinking away.
Lying about the look on my face almost effortlessly.
And you don’t care, you try not to, but you can’t help it.
And you notice the dirt on their clothes, and because you know what it feels like to be stuck in a hole, you offer consoling words
Only to be struck back, lashed at, leave it alone.
And that’s okay, because you tried and were pushed away, it wasn’t you,
Or was it,
You question and search and maybe you shouldn’t have bothered, maybe they like their hole as much as you like yours.
But digging yourself out hurts too much at dusk.
Blindly seeking hand and foot holds, sliding and reopening scabs that healed from the last falls.
So you ask, and you talk because you know.
But the I’m fines and it’s okays and just forget it, push you further back in that hole.
And sometimes you just don’t have the strength to claw yourself out.
You make dolls out of clay, formed from mud and too many rainstorms.
And then it rains again and it all fades away.
But on my good days, the light from the sun doesn’t bother me so much, it lightens me and lifts me up. Dusts me off and sends me on my way.
My hole, I’ve realized, is a prison, not a safe space.
But it’s where I spend most of my time, locked away from ever having to disclose these feelings
That, I don’t even know how to explain.
A Poem a Day 