I lied and said I was fine

I wasn’t subtle about falling apart.

My friends saw the cuts.

The red marks on my arms.

The way I curled inward,

making myself smaller than I was.

They knew I was hurting,

but they didn’t know how deep it went.

I laughed the loudest anyway.

Made jokes of everything I feared,

turned the chaos into stories

that sounded funny instead of frightening.

Humour became my shield.

A distraction.

A way to keep the room comfortable.

When they asked how I was,

I said I was fine,

because saying the truth

felt like it would shatter something in me

I couldn’t rebuild.

The lie didn’t erase the pain.

It just made it easier

for everyone else to ignore.

I watched them accept the answer,

relieved they didn’t have to dig deeper,

grateful there was a mask to believe in.

In time

I began to believe it too,

because the mask was easier to carry

than the truth of what lived beneath it.

I said I was fine

because silence felt safer

than being seen.

And the world believed me

just enough

to leave me alone with the rest.