Invisible Bruises
Your hands do not reach for them because they are not purple, not blue, not spread beneath my skin where the world can point and whisper, “There. That is where it hurts.”
My bruises live deeper than that.
They bloom beneath smiles and behind eyes that have learned to stay dry until the door is locked and the room is dark enough to hold what I cannot say.
No one notices how long it takes me to get out of bed, how heavy my chest becomes when morning arrives again asking me to survive another day I never asked for.
No one sees the nights I spend awake, staring at the ceiling as my thoughts sharpen themselves into little knives that carve away at everything I used to love.
There are bruises where hope used to sit. Bruises where laughter once lived. Bruises on the parts of me that trusted too easily, that loved too deeply, that believed rest would come if I just held on a little longer.
There are bruises left by every swallowed word, every forced apology, every moment I convinced myself that maybe I was the problem, maybe I was too sensitive, too broken, too difficult to carry.
There are bruises from being told I think too much, feel too much, worry too much, as though pain becomes smaller when someone gives it a simpler name.
I have learned to laugh at the right moments, to nod when spoken to, to say “I’m just tired” because people understand tired. People understand headaches, broken bones, cuts that bleed.
But they do not understand the quiet violence of waking up every day already exhausted. They do not understand how depression can hollow out a person without leaving a single mark for anyone else to see.
They do not understand how anxiety sits in the chest like a hand around the throat, how it turns ordinary moments into disasters waiting to happen, how it makes the heart race over words left unsaid, phone calls unanswered, small mistakes that replay for years inside the mind.
No one sees the panic hidden behind stillness, the storm hidden behind silence, the way I can sit in a crowded room and still feel completely alone.
No one sees how many times I rewrite a message before I send it, how many times I almost leave the house then decide I cannot do it, how many nights I sit in the car after coming home from work because going inside feels harder than staying lost for a few more minutes.
There are bruises from every plan I canceled, every friendship I slowly let die, every hobby that stopped feeling like joy and started feeling like work.
There are bruises from becoming a stranger to myself. From waking up one day and realizing I could not remember what I used to sound like before all of this. Before the exhaustion. Before the fear. Before I learned how to survive by disappearing piece by piece.
I miss the person I was before my mind became a place I feared being alone in. I miss laughing without feeling guilty afterward. I miss waking up without already wanting the day to end.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone would notice how hard I am fighting if they could see what lives beneath my skin.
If they could see the fingerprints anxiety leaves around my ribs, the dark handprints depression leaves across my back, the invisible fractures running through every hopeful thing inside me.
Maybe then they would understand why I am so tired. Why I disappear. Why I seem distant even when I am trying my hardest to stay present.
So I wear long sleeves made of practiced smiles, careful words, and the kind of silence that keeps people comfortable.
I become the version of myself that causes the least concern, the least inconvenience, the least chance that someone might ask a question I do not know how to answer.
And still, beneath all of it, the bruises remain— dark, tender, invisible.
The kind no one asks about because the skin above them looks perfectly fine.