Sometimes my head feels like it's filling

My throat starts closing when I need to breathe

When I need to scream but I flick it away

Because ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ ᴜɴᴄᴏᴍᴈᴏʀᴛᴀʙʟᴇ

No one knows what this does to me

But yet we can all relate when the bomb explodes

Why wait until my fate is enclosed

I vent to others hoping for results

But even when I'm hidden I'm still singled out

Why does the universe want me to be alone

Why am I treated like I'm not here

It's not always the peoples fault

I've had people try to hang out with me

But I'm weird, okay

And sometimes I just give off a distant feeling

Maybe I'm a monster

Or maybe I should be alone

Maybe my mind should be my only friend

The one I turn to...

Yeah, that's not going to happen

My mind is my worst bully

Yet I'm caged in, left here

Hyperventilating, panicking

I can't see right

I can't breathe right

I can't hear right

My hearing is fading

I'm fading

I don't know what to...do...

I found my boots where I discarded them five hours ago when I left for work
I shouldn't have been surprised- I knew I had put them there
I just usually don't

My boss was still around when I got there
He put me on an hour earlier for Fridays, so I suppose I'll see him every once in awhile now
When it's just a little too early for him to go home

I hate leaving for seven am in the dark with my hair wet
Distant shuffling noises, echoed ghosts of late last night
Shadows I can't understand
Only cut through by kind people who make breakfast when I can't pull myself together

Our habitat is warm- it surrounds me like a rainforest exhibit in a museum
Somehow not unfamiliar, or exotic,
Exactly like you expected,
Exactly like the pictures

I fell asleep at noon when I got home
Late nights to early mornings to interviews for a real job
Late nights to early mornings to nursing classes
So it goes

I don't remember when my socks came off
When I crawled into bed
When I woke up half alive
I wouldn't have remembered to leave for work at all if I hadn't set an alarm late last night when I got home

"I can't believe I'm doing this."
No time at home, just notes and then more notes and then
Sleep, I guess
Sleep and work and sleep at work as long as I'm on break
Not breaking focus, eyes on some sort of goal I can't quite see yet
But it's there, I know it's there, I've heard it, like a rumor spread so many **** times you can't help but believe it like the most obvious fact
So I'm here, straight as an arrow
Shorts on, notebook out, letting my tea seep into my spirit and fill in all the cracks before I start over