this isn't a poem

•••

I've always been pretty good at locking people out.
and I've always been pretty good at putting up a front to tell the world that I'm okay-
and I've always been pretty good at making them believe it.
you laugh with your friends and you hide the panic in your eyes when you're in public and you pass it off to others. but that's not always gonna happen. I know it's not. I'm gonna find someone who's gonna crack me.
And I swear that it's him.
He knows I don't eat like I should. And he knows that I'll fall sick to my stomach after eating when it's been two days. He knows that anytime I come home, I'm stepping into the battlefield and I just have to pray my odds are good and I can dodge the arsenic bullets today.
And I know that this won't last and that one day, he'll know.
He'll know how I take my coffee, and that I prefer tea over coffee any day; that I can go days without eating before I crack under the force of hunger pains, but I can't go a day without soda or I'll have a full-out migraine from the lack of caffeine. He'll know what keeps me up at night and what to do if I wake up shaking or in a panic attack. He'll know how to hold me when I'm sleepy and how to hold me when I'm sick; he'll know that when I'm upset, I'll barely speak at all.
He'll know that I'll never see my writing as poetic as I'd like it to be, but he knows I'll trust him enough to read what I've written.
He'll know that I may never fully come out and tell him every single imminent detail of what's going on in my head. He'll know  that I hate being out in public.
He'll know everything that ****** me off and he'll know everything that makes me happy and he still won't care because he loves me.