January's poem
Abstract with themes of autism masking, trying to satisfy others, neglecting your own needs for the sake of others and people pleasing.
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Mask
It gets hard to breathe behind a mask for six hours - It's the same way for my intangible one.
The clenching of a jellyfish around my heart often initiates the façade.
I find comfort in other's comfort - the only reason my mask has any effect.
It's not for living, but for surviving.
Each day leaving me intact
but never whole.
Even my handcrafted mask has cracks
cracks which they never fail to point out.
The errors in my mental system never go unnoticed.
An unusual response always goes pointed out - wether to my face or to their friends
who laugh in the presence of my anxiousness.
Only on cue is the familiar contraction of the jellyfish around my ventricles.
It writhes its way around my arteries as if to rub it in my face that I had messed up - my masterfully crafted façade, or so I thought.
An earthquake commences inside my mind - a cruel domino effect. A flurry of negativity and overthinking.
Time by myself helps to mend the mask; collecting fragments of it from my brain's bib.
I find that the perfect mending atmosphere is a solitary, quiet room with my favourite media playing in the background for me to indulge in for the hundredth time.
I guess it doesn't matter wether it's fixed or not anyway, though. They'll only shatter it again.
Only so much superglue can hold together a plastic mask.
Now imagine that, except introversion is the glue
and I am the mask.