Edited pain that is to real to be understood

“Don’t Call it weak”

I try to speak, but it comes out wrong,

like my truth is too heavy for the air in the room.

So I swallow it back down

and act like I’m fine.

But I’m not.

There’s a war inside my head

no one can see,

and I’m expected to smile

like everything is normal.

Some days I wake up already tired,

not from sleep, but from thinking.

Thinking too much, feeling too much,

holding everything in so tightly

it starts to feel like I’m disappearing inside myself.

When I try to explain it,

they look at me like I’m breaking,

like I’m fragile,

like I’m less than who I should be.

So I stop.

Because it’s easier to suffer quietly

than to be misunderstood loudly.

They say “talk about it,”

but they don’t mean it.

They mean talk about it

in a way that doesn’t make them uncomfortable.

So I edit my pain.

I soften my truth.

I hide the parts that sound too real.

I rearrange my feelings into sentences

that won’t raise questions.

But the truth is —

I’m not okay in the way they think I am.

I’m just good at pretending I am.

And that’s the scariest part:

not that I’m struggling,

but that I’ve gotten good at hiding it.

Because if I speak too honestly,

I risk being called dramatic.

If I say too much,

I become “too sensitive.”

If I break even a little,

they might stop taking me seriously.

So I hold it in.

I carry it.

I learn how to breathe through it

like it’s normal.

But tell me —

how is it weakness

to survive something

you can’t even explain?

And if I ever do find the words,

real words, not the safe ones,

not the filtered ones,

will anyone actually hear me

the way I meant to be heard?

Or will they just decide

who I am