Tears are there. I can feel them. An ever present inconvenience. It is never the time or the place to let them flow. They live behind my eyes – depression my face behind the one of flesh.

The days happen to me. They are there, I can feel their occurrence.  But they don’t suit me, I am not enjoying their ways. They linger too long, but pass frighteningly fast – another month gone, soon, another year of crippling inertia has passed.

All of my moves are against the will of my body. The pain of tiredness lives in my eyes and foggy, leaden head. It is distressing to want nothing, to look forward to nothing, to enjoy nothing. The fatigued brain craves nothingness, but the brain still left belonging to me, craves more.

No one guesses it, no one could – functioning is deceptive, and conforming to the expected norm is satisfactory behaviour for those around. My pain festers silently, the most dangerous of infections.

I want to be parented, but I am a parent. I have dependents, dependent on me.  It kills me and keeps me alive all at once.

I slip into the shadow of myself, alive, but am I living?

Artwork taken from a card by one canoe two