How do you not scare the ones who love you?
You smile at regular intervals.
You laugh at the right places.
You make jokes that are only appropriately sad.
You try to ask after people.
Pick up after 3 missed calls with a good excuse,
Something more tactful than,”Sorry I was trying not to kill myself when you called.”
How do you not scare the ones who love you?
You skip whole sections of the story that would give away your desire to die.
Dear so and so, don’t ask me what I was doing on the balcony at 3 am, but ask me who I saw dropping who off, you won’t believe it.
Keep it light. Claw at your skin when you want to cry.
Pretend to be sleepy when it gets too hard.
Hide.
The need to be unseen overweighs the need to be comforted.
Say ‘Yes Yes Yes’ and never ‘No No No’.
Make them talk about themselves so they forget to ask about you.
Pray people forget you ever existed.
Eventually, absence feels less like presence
And more like only absence.
