It doesn’t always look like crying.
Sometimes it’s just silence that stays too long.
It’s the half-smile,
The “I’m fine”
That sounds just convincing enough to stop the questions.

And when you finally slip,
They say,
“They should’ve said something”
“I didn’t know it was that bad”
“Why didn’t they just ask for help?”
But help starts to feel like guilt.
Like handing your pain to someone who’s already got their own.

So you stay quiet.
You try.
Until you can’t anymore.

People light candles for a soul they never saw burning.
And just like that,
you become
Important.
Valuable.
Tragic.
Because people only care once you’re gone.

So if you’re here,
Still breathing,
Still hurting.
Let this be proof
That your silence is speaking.
That someone is listening.
That even on the days you feel invisible,
You are not

Please stay.

If I disappeared,
Not loud,
Not dramatic,
Not quietly,
Like the last page of a book ripped out and never missed.
Would anyone notice?
Would silence shift?
Would my name feel heavy in a sentence or just,
Trail off?

You see me,
But do you really?
Or just the version
That doesn’t cry too loud,
Doesn’t make things heavy,
Performs what’s easier to like?

I’ve been heavy for a long time,
Just never when youre looking.

I say
“I’m fine”
Like it’s the only language I know.
I burn without making smoke.
And maybe that the tragedy, not the leaving,
But how easy it is to be gone while still standing there.

If I just disappeared,
Would the world adjust,
Or would it ache?

Look around and ask yourself,
Who around me might already be half-gone?

They say,
“everything happens for a reason”
But what if the reason is just that there’s no reason at all?
What if the ‘reason’ is just a word we use to quiet the chaos,
To soothe the ache that won’t be silenced by hope?

Sometimes,
Things just happen.
Bad things.
Unfair things.

And the world doenst care to explain.
Things just happen.
They crash and burn
Without meaning,
Without purpose,
Without a plan.

The pain, it’s not a lesson.
It’s not a fate’s whisper.
It’s chaos knocking,
A cruel roll of dice that no one asked to play.

I don’t think the universe cares about justice or balance.
It doenst pause to explain
Why hearts break,
Why dreams shatter,
Why silence sometimes screams louder than any answer ever could.

Sometimes,
Life just happens.
And that is the only truth I need to hold.

Sometimes, I think I want to disappear.
To melt into the background do no one can ask me what wrong when I don’t know how to answer.

I think about vanishing,
Slipping between cracks where no one looks,
No one calls,
No one noticed the space I leave behind.
But the truth is,
I don’t want to be gone.
I want to be searched for.
Feel missing.

I want someone to say,
“I see you”
and mean it.

Because disappearing isn’t about fading,
It’s about wanting someone to pull you back.
To look past your
“I’m fine”
and ask again.
To see the version of you that’s curled up in silence,
Hoping someone heard the echo of everything you didn’t say.

I don’t want to be lost.
I just want to be found.
Not by everyone, just by someone who wont leave when I stop shining.
Someone who notices the dimming light and stays anyway.

So no,
I don’t want to dissapear
I just want proof
That if I did,
Someone would come looking.

They ask me, “how are you?”
And I open my mouth but all that comes out is,
“I don’t know”

It’s not a lie.
It’s not the truth either.
It’s the fog I live in,
The static in my chest where answer used to live.

How do you explain that you feel everything and nothing a true same time?
That your heart is full and hollow in the same breath?
Sometimes I do know.
I know I’m sad.
I know I’m tired.
I know I feel like I’m slowly slipping and no one notices.

But if I say that,
They’ll worry and I can’t carry that too.
So I say “I don’t know”
Because maybe if I don’t say it out loud,
It wont be real.
Because maybe if I pretend not to feel,
I’ll stop feeling so much.

I say it with a shrug,
With a half-smile,
Like it’s nothing.
But inside, it’s everything.
Everything I can’t say,
Everything I’ve buried.

And when you nod an move on,
I almost wish
You’d ask again.

Ive mastered the art of shrinking.
Of softening my ‘no’ int o a maybe just to keep the peace.
I mold myself into what they need,
A smile here,
A favour there,
A thousand yeses when my bones are begging for rest.

They call me kind.
Helpful.
Easy to be around.
But no one sees the cracks beneath the polished version of me I perform on autopilot.

I say sorry for simply existing too loudly.
I apologise when someone else hurt me.
I carry guilt like it’s mine to own, even when it was never meant for me.

And the truth is,
I don’t know what I want anymore.
I’ve been so busy being what everyone else needed that I lost shape of who I was before the pleasing became survival.
Because if they’re happy,
Then maybe I’m safe.
Then maybe I’ll be enough.
Then maybe they’ll stay.

I wonder,
Who would still like me
If I stopped trying so hard?

Its the answer I’ve rehearsed,
The shield I raise without thinking.
Three words stacked like bricks between me and the world.
Because if I say more,
If I let the cracks show.
They might fall through.
And then I’d have to explain
why my heart feels heavy,
Why my mind wont stop spinning,
Why the silence inside me is louder than any noice outside.

So I say,
“I’m fine”
Like a broken record,
Like a lie I tell myself first.

It’s easier this way,
to tuck the storm away,
To hide the pain behind a smile,
To keep the floodgates closed.

But sometimes, in the quiet, when no one’s watching those words echo back at me.
A hollow, Empty promise that doesn’t mean a thing.
Because inside,
Im not fine.
Not really.

But the world doesn’t need to know that.
So I say it again,
Softly,
As prayer,
As a lie,

“I’m fine.”