I am calm, yet I break at the voices. It's the strange, tight feeling. The lump in my throat, the lack of breath, the tensing in my body, the heat in my head, the sting in my eyes.

Now I hold my breath, holding back the pitiful flood of emotion. Pause. Think clear.

No crying, no tears. You can't stop it, just do it. My eyes unblur as I release the breath calmly. I look back into their eyes. Their concerned look, worried behind the calm, or maybe they don't care. Still, I am here.

I maintain the emotions, I reply in small words but feel casual enough.

No crying, no sadness, or pity to yourself. Its not allowed. You're fine.

I'm not.

They offer me mindless hope that I know even they do not believe.

I shrug.

I sit quietly, mindless, yet feeling a swirl of ache. The draining thoughts I space away from still take hold of a part of me. They wish to release, one way or another.

Hold your breath. Open your eyes. Do you see it too? When you look through my own eyes, are you still blinded from it?

What is my problem, you still ask me.

Me, do you not see?

They still cannot see it of course. How can they, they do not live it.

I cannot explain myself any more than "I have problems!!"

Breathe.

I was talking to myself this time.

Where am I?

In the cycle. The pain, the lack of efforts, the constant cycle that you cannot change. You give up slowly, then your reality is back, weighing you down more than your mind already had been.

So I see they do not see it. Even when they look me in the eyes, even when I sob in terror of my own world in my head. Even when I tell them the dark things I've come to face.

'Where did it all go wrong' I know they think it too.

When did you fall, why didn't you hold on? How could I hold onto support that wasn't there. The absence left me to eternal fall, trying to figure out why I was left behind, why me.