I Promise I’ll Stop Saying ‘I’m Okay’ When I’m Not (And Other Lies I Tell Myself)

It’s turning into an everyday routine, I wake up and tell myself it will be a good day. But it rarely is. I’m stuck alone all day with my thoughts and they just progressively get worse as the hours past and the day turns to night.

I try to convince myself when I’m alone with my thoughts to think positively, but it never works. I’m stuck alone with my feelings and I can’t escape them.

The silence grows greater with every passing tick on the clock and I have nowhere to run, the feelings are just dancing around in my head and I can’t escape them.

I can’t do anything but accept them, let them continue to dance while all I can do is sit here and let them because I’m too tired to fight them off anymore.

Lately, I’ve been trying to laugh but it’s been getting harder. It’s been getting lost behind the voices in my own head telling me this isn’t where I belong. It’s been getting lost behind my own personal hell I’ve been trying to fight, a battle I’m constantly losing.

I know it’s become apparent in my eyes, that they can blatantly tell you that I’m not okay, but most people still just look away.

In a way I don’t want you to notice because I don’t want to drown you in my problems and become a burden. But part of me is screaming for someone to actually ask me what’s wrong and want to hear the answer.

Part of me is begging to be saved, part of me is begging for someone to care enough to ask me if I’m okay and actually wait to hear the answer.

I don’t know how much longer I can cry for help silently right in front of you.

I tell myself that next time someone asks me what’s wrong, I won’t say I’m okay, I’ll actually tell them, but the words won’t come out of my mouth.

What I really want to tell you, what I really want to get off my chest won’t come out.

The only thing that comes out with “I’m okay” is tears because when my mouth doesn’t explain the way I feel my eyes express themselves.

It just adds to the list of promises I make to myself. I promise myself I will stop pretending everything is okay when it clearly isn’t. I promise myself that if I just stay a little longer everything will work out. I promise myself that tomorrow I’ll have a different mindset. I promise myself that when I wake up in the morning that the world won’t be as miserable.

I promise myself a lot of things, but the one thing I always fail to keep my promise about is admitting I’m not okay because I want to think of myself as stronger.

It’s a desperate cry for help, while at the same time keeping it locked up inside. It’s a never-ending cycle of self-torture that I just can’t stop.

It’s the constant self-inflicting pain that I can’t get enough of.

I’ll sit with my own pain, I’ll let the voices dance in my head while I can’t escape my own thoughts and I’ll continue to tell myself that I’m okay.

I’m not as okay as I pretend to be, but maybe one day I will be.