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What I didn’t know I was holding #Poetry #Narcolepsy #MentalHealth
This is something I wrote today. Writing is helping me process my chronic illness.
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What I didn’t know I was holding:
I didn’t know
that most people don’t wake up
already tired.
That showers don’t drain them.
That joy isn’t rationed,
measured in teaspoons
of energy they can’t spare.
I thought I was normal
because no one told me otherwise.
Because my mother didn’t tell me
that pain can have a name.
Because in my family,
suffering was swallowed,
then called strength.
I learned to call it strength, too.
I smiled through fog,
walked on bones that ached like bruises,
held my breath through fatigue
that wrapped itself around my brain
and made me disappear
in plain sight.
I was praised for being capable,
for pushing through,
for carrying what no one saw
was breaking me.
And I believed them.
I believed myself.
That I was just sensitive,
or weak,
or lazy,
or wrong
for wanting the pain to mean something
other than failure.
I didn’t know
that what I was surviving
was not survivable forever.
That one day the pushing
would push back.
Now I am here.
Still trying.
But I am sick.
And I am done pretending
that sick means broken
or invisible
or unworthy of softness.
I see myself now—
not dramatic, not weak,
but someone who has been
astonishingly brave
in the wrong direction.
I am learning
how to live
without abandoning myself
in the process.
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