Battling The Quiet Killers

Depression is a killer

not with blades or sound,

but with silence,

with weight,

with days that feel like drowning

while the world keeps breathing.

It steals color from the morning,

turns laughter into echoes,

and teaches the mind

how to doubt its own worth

until believing feels impossible.

Bipolar lives in the wiring,

a storm built into the brain.

High tides of hope that promise too much,

then crash into lows so deep

even memory can’t find the light.

One day I’m racing the sky,

heart loud,

thoughts faster than truth.

The next,

I’m buried under gravity,

bones heavy with questions

that never answer back.

I fight every single day.

Not heroically.

Not gracefully.

Sometimes I fight by getting up.

Sometimes by breathing.

Sometimes just by staying.

And still

I can’t climb out yet.

Still trapped in the fog,

still bruised by my own thoughts,

still tired in ways sleep can’t touch.

But fighting doesn’t always look like winning.

Sometimes it looks like surviving quietly.

Sometimes it looks like crying and staying anyway.

Sometimes it’s just refusing to disappear.

I am not weak for struggling.

I am not broken beyond repair.

I am battling an illness

that lives inside the mind

and I am still here.

And today

that has to be enough.