For Whom

It’s suicide prevention month,
so everybody is practicing the language of staying.

They say,
check on your strong friends.
They say,
you never know what somebody is carrying.
They say,
we need to talk about mental health.

But most people only know how to talk about the parts
that make them feel kind.

The crisis.
The tears.
The medicine bottles.
The emergency rooms.
The almosts.

They know how to love a person
when the pain is dramatic enough
to be undeniable.

But what about the kind of suffering
that shows up early?

The kind that answers emails.
The kind that makes the meeting.
The kind that smiles with its whole face
while something inside it is crawling
toward the door.

What about the kind of suffering
that looks like ambition?

Because my ambition is a mask
you love for me to wear.

You call it drive.
You call it passion.
You call it purpose.
You call it “going places.”

And I don’t know how to tell you
that sometimes going places
feels like being dragged
by a future everybody else picked out
because it looked good on me.

I hold responsibilities on pedestals.

I make altars out of being needed.
I light candles for deadlines.
I kneel before calendars.
I offer my body
to the goddess of being useful

and call it work ethic.

I keep my feelings in eggshells.

Careful.
Careful.
Careful.

Don’t speak too loudly.
Don’t need too much.
Don’t crack in front of anyone
who might mistake the mess
for weakness
instead of evidence
that something living was inside.

I wear reliability like body armor.

See?
Look.

Nothing gets through.

Not the grief.
Not the exhaustion.
Not the part of me
that wakes up already apologizing
for how hard it is
to keep me alive.

And you never know
unless I tell you.

But here is the part
we don’t put on the posters.

Sometimes I do tell you.

Sometimes I take the whole mask off.

I put it in your hands.

I show you every inch.
Every seam.
Every stitch where I learned
to look impressive
instead of wounded.

I show you the places
where the gold is just bruising
with better lighting.

I say,
this is heavy.

I say,
I am tired.

I say,
I am scared of how good I am
at seeming okay.

And you say,
I hear you.

But your actions say,
I hear you,
and I don’t care enough
to stop benefiting from it.

I hear you,
but can you still lead the thing?

I hear you,
but can you still hold the room?

I hear you,
but can you still be brilliant
while bleeding quietly?

I hear you,
but please don’t make your pain
inconvenient.

This is the dangerous place.

Not always the bottom.
Not always the breakdown.
Not always the night
with the locked bathroom door
and the shaking hands. The shaking core.

Sometimes the most dangerous place
is hidden in plain sight.

It is the woman getting praised
for surviving something
no one should have asked her
to endure.

It is the person everyone calls strong
because nobody wants to admit
they have been using strength
as permission.

It is the applause
that sounds like a shovel.

Dig deeper.
Carry more.
Smile wider.
Be easier to love.

And then, when the story ends badly,
everybody becomes a historian.

I never knew.

She seemed so happy.

She was doing so well.

She was going places.

And maybe they forget to ask:

Happy for whom?

Doing well for whom?

Going places for whom?

Because if my joy only counts
when it makes you comfortable,
then it was never joy.

If my healing only matters
when it keeps me productive,
then it was never healing.

If my life is only valuable
when I can carry yours too,
then please don’t call it love.

Call it extraction.

Call it convenience.

Call it watching someone drown
and complimenting their form.

We talk about mental health
like it is only darkness.

But there is magic here too.

There is pattern.
There is fire.
There is a mind that sees doors
where other people see walls.

There is depth.
There is tenderness.
There is the strange, spiritual ability
to feel the weather changing
inside a room
before anyone else notices
the sky.

There is creativity
that comes from living
near the edge of things.

There is empathy
sharp enough
to cut through silence.

There is vision.
There is velocity.
There is the terrifying beauty
of a brain that refuses
to be ordinary.

And people love that part.

They love the insight.
The output.
The art.
The urgency.
The way I can turn pain
into something useful
before breakfast.

They love the magic.

They just don’t want the receipt.

They don’t want to know
what it costs
to be this alive
in a world that keeps asking
for the performance
but not the person.

So this month,
don’t just ask if I am okay.

Ask what okay has been costing me.

Ask who gets fed
when I starve myself
into excellence.

Ask what I had to silence
to become so easy
to celebrate.

Ask whether the thing
you admire most about me
is also the thing
that is killing me slowly.

And when I answer,
believe me
before the obituary makes me credible.

Believe me
before the candlelight vigil.
Before the shared post.
Before the soft sad caption
about checking on your friends.

Believe me
while I am still here.

While I am still difficult.
Still breathing.
Still asking.
Still angry.
Still inconveniently alive.

Because prevention
is not a month.

It is not a ribbon.
It is not a hotline number
passed around after someone is gone.

Prevention is what you do
when the strong friend
stops making strength look pretty.

Prevention is what you do
when the mask comes off
and the person underneath
is not inspirational.

Just tired.

Just human.

Just standing in front of you
with all their seams showing,
waiting to see
whether you loved them…

 or only loved
the version of them
that could keep bleeding
without making a mess.