That's the strangest part. How common it is, yet how little we do about it. And how we’ve adapted to hide it well. Learning to respond with "I'm fine" without putting any thought into it becomes second nature to you. Learning to smile without feeling happy at all. Learning to maintain a conversation despite your mind being elsewhere. After a while, nobody asks any more questions because there is nothing to ask. The both of you know the response. Why bother? You gave them no reason to think that there is something wrong.

Maybe you even stopped asking yourself.

There are those who are exhausted and keep moving forward because they have nowhere else to go. There are those who are afraid of what the future may hold for them, but still plan because everything is fine. Those who always doubt themselves but somehow find it in themselves to motivate everyone around them. I’m sure there’s someone like that in your life. I’m almost positive you're one of those people reading, if you're here.

Perhaps you are one such person. And here it gets complicated. Because struggles that are invisible tend to be misunderstood even by those struggling.

Maybe they do. But pain was never really a competition. You do not have to prove that your pain is worse than someone else’s before you are permitted to recognize it. And perhaps you don't even need to know what you're tired from.

There are battles that come from constantly thinking about the future. There's battles that come from a fear of betrayal, abandonment, and hopelessness. What if everything you’ve worked for disappears? What if you disappoint someone? What if you become the very person you were afraid of becoming? You can spend an entire day doing nothing physically exhausting while your mind has been running for hours. Nobody sees that. You don’t let anyone see it.

They just see you sitting there.

There are also battles that come from the past. Conversations you replay years later. Things you wish you said differently. People you lost. Decisions you made. Moments you’d be willing to sacrifice to forget. And perhaps that's one of the cruellest things about our mind. You try to abandon the parts of yourself that broke you, and they're still there when you turn back. Because you haven’t moved on, no matter who you may try to convince otherwise. 

I believe we undervalue the amount of energy that goes into pretending that you’re okay. Some people get out of bed in the morning and have to motivate themselves to take part in their own life. They go to work, college, or just the store. They live life as any functioning person should, yet do meaningless tasks to occupy their time, or shut down completely with how overwhelming living life feels. There is simply no language to describe what they feel. No amount of explaining, no amount of testing, or writing it down will ever justify what is truly felt. I mean, how do you say that you’re not quite sad, but not quite happy? How do you say that not anything bad happened to you today, but there is something within you that makes you feel like lead? How do you explain that you get tired of being yourself for some time without sounding dramatic? 

(How I despise the concept of attention seeking. Hiding yourself from others; yet suffering in seclusion is not a symptom of someone looking for mere attention. To be unwell is to be unwell, do not consider it dramatic to ask, just ask.)

You say you're tired. You go to sleep. And tomorrow, you do it all again. It is possible for these reasons too that we misinterpret the strength of others. We expect that since they have been able to overcome past hardships, then they will surely withstand any future hardships that come their way. They become reliable individuals. The individual who everyone turns to when things don't go right. The individual who knows what needs to be said. The ability to carry things does not make them any lighter. The strength of someone could mask their pain just as the weakness of someone else can reveal their pain. Sometimes those individuals who seem to be the most together are simply those who learned long ago that it was never an option to fall apart. They were able to function. This is not the same thing as being okay.

One of the loneliest feelings is having people around you while believing that nobody actually sees you. You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone if the version of yourself they know is only the version you've learned to show them. To show them anything else, feels wrong. The difficult thing about these wars in our head, is that there is rarely a dramatic moment where everything suddenly becomes better. There's no final boss. No credits rolling. No clear indication that you’ve finally won. You can rest.

Yet. . .it does get easier. After some time, you sleep a little better. You stop replaying one particular memory. You finally tell someone the truth. You laugh without forcing it. You have a good day and don't immediately question why. You allow yourself to exist. This shows that Inside your thoughts. Inside your memories. Inside the parts of yourself you rarely show anyone anymore, that you can win. For days of hell may be because the demons won the battle, but you are there to win the war.