Behind the smile is bleeding.

How do I tell them?

I'm the one who slays the dragons. I'm the one who quells the fears. The fixer. The planner.

What happens when my capacity lessens?

I'm not good at it, you see. Being other than all those things.

Maybe it's fear of being let down. Maybe it's trust. Maybe they won't stay once I tell them. How do I tell them?

I'm a wreck more regularly now than ever. I'm doling out my anxieties in chewable bites, because I don't want it to be indigestible to others. I'm good at finding sunshine in the cracks. A gift, or a curse.

People can't seem to imagine I have an in between. My gray doesn't feel allowed. "But she's so happy..." I can be happy. I have my glimmers. I have this too.

What if they can't handle it? People are starting to see it though. I'm bleeding, and I can't stop it. I'm not alone.

They all have enough on their plate though- I feel so selfish ruminating on me and mine, and they don't ask. They don't ask. So I don't tell. They don't know the rule of three. Ask three times. The truth is in the third.

Falling back on acting skills honed over a lifetime.

Waking from nightmares. Crippling anxiety attacks. Crying in corners with my fist in my mouth- even I'm unprepared for the emotion being released.

I've protested all my life. In my mothers arms, then walking, running. Being the voice my father couldn't be. Screaming from rooftops, carrying signs. Being spit on, hearing slurs. Knowing I could die for this. Being in a place now I barely have the capacity to go out.

Can you imagine the warfare someone must feel to ask for basic common decency? What a privilege it is to not have the supreme court of a nation to decide you are valid- and you have rights too? Don't be mistaken- the women's vote, the civil rights act, the freedom to marry... things others took for granted. A past gone assumption for a few. Yet I wait for when my rights will be torn away.

I have never doubted in all my days my life is considered less valid. My country tells me so.

Don't tell me otherwise. In today's climate, it would make you a liar.

It doesn't help when people tell me they're worried. You think I'm not? I don't want to carry the burden of your worries- I'm tired enough. So I don't. Keep them to yourself. Stop telling me you're worried.

I'm tired. So tired.

 Losing people close to me, to a preventable illness. What if my father has another stroke from all the stress? When will I touch my mother again? As if it wasn't enough, watching society catch up to something I've known all along- I'm a second class citizen in a world I have to work twice as hard for half as much, and this is an epiphany for all of them. Then they keep piling up. The possibility of losing a business I've built all by myself... This is my reality.

I don't want a pity party. I don't want to bleed so people can see. Rationally I understand it's not weakness, but how is it not? To break in all the places that can break.

"Find solace in others". I'm not entirely sure I want your solace. They want to tell me we have these things in common- do we? They tell me they understand- do they?

I'm far from special- but imagine people who can't understand- socioeconomically, or by skin color, or gender, how I feel...

No- you fucking don't. It's okay, just don't pander to me. Please.

My nightmares are not yours. My fears, my torments. My coping mechanisms. Even as they break.

Goddamn it, don't you see? How can I ask you to hold space? You could be gone tomorrow. So could I.

How do you comfort the planner? The fixer? The slayer of dragons? How do they quell my fears?