Please Understand

I can't,

I'm sorry.

Not yet.

Its too soon.

The wounds still too raw, the scars still healing. I'm scared and this isn't helping. I don't know if or when, but I do know not now. I can't explain it. Everything is so complicated. I am complicated. I am still working out who I am. Others aren't helping. Its just making it worse.

Stop it everyone...

Just don't!

Don't joke, don't tease, don't laugh.

When I laugh along, I'm not really laughing with you. I'm laughing so you won't see how hurt I am. How much I am hurting. Not just by what you are saying, though that certainly doesn't help. I hurt everyday. Sometimes so much so that I don't want to get out of bed. Sometimes so much so that I would do anything to make it stop. You're jokes are like adding salt on a wound.

If only you could understand.

But no one really understands. My masks work 24/7. There are many. On very rare occasions I have briefly removed a mask. But usually it is quickly replaced by another. When you've been hiding for so long, after a while, you don't notice that you are hiding.

I'm tired. Tired if hiding. Tired of protecting myself. That's why I'm saying this. I am tired and venerable - your words, your actions, even your thoughts, are adding more and more pressure.

I can't cope.

All of this is adding water to mud.

I am slipping. I can feel myself being sucked back down.

Back down to the depths I have worked so hard to emerge from.

Just cause I've been ok doesn't mean everything is ok again.

Remember that quote 'time heals all wounds', well there are many, many, many wounds. So I'm gonna need a little longer.

Please understand.