What is wrong with you? - The comfort of pain

He is not always like this. On most days he is actually happy and kind. He radiates this energy that just makes everyone around him let go of all their insecurities. He feels like a safe space and will never try to advise anyone on how to go about their life. Beautiful inside and out.

He is a healer, but he is the type of doctor to overthink his own symptoms.

Life has never been kind to him. He found kindness in pain and got so comfortable with it. He cannot stand the suffering of others but will never think twice about his own sacrifices.

Forced to grow up too early, he had to let go of his childhood and step into shoes he never saw. Somehow, he still learnt to love walking.

His smile is the most expensive thing he wears because he knows that any moment he can lose it.

Like all human beings, everyone has limits, he has had two mental break downs in the last three years and every time he loses a part of him. He has become so attached to the pain that he cannot hide it. Going around with the weight of responsibilities on his shoulders, he does not know how to express his pain. The only thing he knows is the comfort of his heart because even his mind is never at peace.

So, he walks around like a living dead. His face all-telling but his lips glued together. No one ever understands him. “Hide your pain” they say. But his face is his cry for help because he got so accustomed to silence. Instead of noticing this and helping, they notice it and it bothers them. Asking questions like “What is wrong with you?”

He lives in his mind and sometimes by the time he comes out of his shell the world has moved on without him. He does not know why he is like this, nor how to fix it. He is broken, maybe even shattered and so he is scared to see anyone else like this. Some take advantage of this, others find him weak, but it never bothers him. He knows how to be alone, and he is good at it. What he finds more heartbreaking is feeling like he is not enough. He loves to help but he is not almighty, he can only do so much.

He tries to be there as much as possible, but the current generation treats availability as being idle and lifeless.

He therefore never fits in, losing friends along the way and his incredible people skills are no longer as incredible. He has developed social anxiety, and he is starting to feel lonely. Reaching out has never been harder and he does not even know if he wants to. Listening to people being vulnerable and how their cries for help were ignored makes him wish there were more people like him. But maybe that would make everything worse.

He is just trying to make connections, talk to people and go deeper than the surface. It’s creepy in a way but he finds it pointless to have shallow conversations. Small talk is exactly what it sounds like to him, small!

Maybe if he was better at hiding, he would have a normal life. But what even is a normal life?

Slowly but fast enough he is losing his optimism to negativity. His love to connect with people is being replaced by an urge to disappear and disconnect. Maybe if no one expected anything from him, maybe if he did not have an obligation to be a part of some lives, maybe if he was all alone, he would feel better. If only it were that easy.

Many are times he isolates himself overthinking every little word that he might want to come out his mouth and when he finally has it, the timing is against him.

He is turning into a social cue disaster, and his mind is not making it better.

He is haunted by words he should have said or even the posture he should have used in a past social situation. The weight of their eyes on him, their words and their whispers that he might have imagined, they rob him of himself.

No man is an island used to be a thing in the past. When human beings needed communities to survive attacks from wild animals. Now it is judgement here and abandonment there. Everyone is just selfish and looking out for their own. It is why it feels isolating being a part of nobody’s “own.” However, being the first man-made island is not such a bad idea. But nonetheless, he has made a vow to never change.

If he is meant to have nothing in this cruel world, he will not lose himself to it either.

Maybe one day someone will understand but he is not counting on it. It is realising that not all opinions matter, especially those that attempt to dictate his life. There is room for growth and improvement and he will get better. But he is not competing with anyone to improve himself. If being accommodating means he has to be any less than all of him, then maybe he will pack up a tent and live in the wild with the nicer animals.