sad e×cuses

i can feel you growing. inside my stomach. i wonder if others will notice soon. they will ask me how far into this journey i am. i'll just smile and offer a fake lie, a half truth. "a few months" ill say with a smile i contort my face to make. they dont know the truth. only i do.

i can feel you growing day by day. sometimes i forget youre there until you kick and remind me. the kick hurts, it makes me cry, it makes me bawl, it turns me ugly.

i can feel you building up, consuming me. poisoning me. i wish i could cut you out. id take a knife to my stomach and carve you from my body if i could. i dont just want to kill you, i want who i was before back.

i think im living with a stranger, but maybe thats just me.

he's always there lurking, but no one can see.

i don't feel threatened or unsafe just never at ease.

my friends don't know about him. it's funny because he's met them all but they'd never know.

it's not all bad, sometimes he helps. the things i don't want to do mostly. but i wish i was free.

he's anxious and lonely, always filling my head with doubt but without him im lost.

please, just for a moment. bless me with your spice kissed sapphires.

mine are broken, mine are blind. the mirror lies and i buy it. every time i buy it, i know it lies, but i really do. i see what you see, at times. but it doesnt register the same as it does for you. let me look through your windows. maybe that will fix me.

im a dropped lego model. too much effort to put back together so you buy another, you tell yourself 'ill be more careful with this one'. i sit in a box in your attic, one day ill be whole.

everyone loves the idea of you. because thats all you are to them, and thats what other people are to you.

the idea of you, shes beautiful, shes thin, she passes, shes not the little girl who congratulates herself every birthday just for making it to another number. shes perfect. im not that. in my head i am, i can escape and be you, i can love you. its only once the music stops im left feeling like the fool who keeps dancing. like some sick joke being played on me by some omnipotent figure.

reality hits hard. you stop being the idea, even to me. you're real and baby theres so much wrong. you arent thin, you dont pass, youre the girl whose 5 year plan is "survive comma maybe". but people dont see that, only i see that. i hate you for showing me her. "bring back the idea" id joke if it didnt hurt too much. i cant bring an idea to life sadly and if i could id probably end up hating her too, thats kind of how these things go.

its funny in a way, id never tell you this but i keep trying to kill you. insane i know. showing people behind the curtain, how the sausage is made, unmask you, break the fourth wall. whatever you wanna fucking call it. ive tried it. in hopes it kills you. in hopes that it puts you in the ground and whenever people think about you its me they see. its not been too successful, were cowards after all, arent we? but i try. and will keep trying. i dont know why, maybe to feel something. so that when someone sees us it hurts and they push us away because we know we arent good and feeling someone else validate that makes us think we arent a little crazy.

932 days since the last time I was able to see you, to feel you in my body. 932 days since I felt happy, truly happy. The type of happiness that comes not from other people but the quiet happy I feel being ok within my body.

932 days and each one hurts as much as the first. Some days I get all the way through the day before a reminder will hit me. 932 days of listening to people I love gush about how excited they are for you. I don't blame them, if I could have you right now I would. I would binge. Make myself sick desperately trying to make up for lost time.

932 days of being inside of an invisible prison. 932 days of watching myself slowly change back to who I was before you. I need you, I crave you, I miss you.

being sick is easy, well not easy. most people get sick at some point in their lives and those are often short illnesses that they recover from. my sickness is a little more annoying than that, it's not some common cold i'll get over in a week. it's something that's been with me for years and something that makes me who i am. it's 'easy' in the same way that learning a new language is easy. some days i feel like i can easily grasp a new word or phrase and it makes me smile; others it makes me want to ball up in the corner and cry and scream because the my pronounciation isn't perfect.

it's easy because it doesn't impact anyone else. my failures are my own private shame never to be heard by experienced speakers. paradoxically my triumphs are also kept quiet. "oh great you managed to learn the three new words today whoop-de-doo" it's embarassing to say that on days where I feel good and I try and hide it. I don't want praise for not taking a nap in the 12 hours I'll be awake today.

that's all the easy part, being sick i can manage because i manage it alone.