This Is What It Feels Like When You’re The Girl Who Is Always ‘Okay’

The truth about being the girl who is always okay?

In all honesty, it doesn’t feel good.

In actuality, it feels like red cheeks, the kind you can feel from the inside out. The kind that splay across your face when you’re trying to keep everything you wish you could say clenched between your teeth.

It feels like bitten nails and the kind of lumps that live within your throat and make it hard to swallow. It feels like going to the bathroom a few times too many just to compose yourself, just to put your wrists under cold water to ease the anxiety that comes with feeling loneliness wash over you in a crowded room.

It feels like a charade. Like you’re playing a part you never wanted in the first place. It feels like memorized lines, and knowing when to smile whenever someone looks at you as to ensure they don’t catch on. It feels like a game you have mastered.

It feels like never being able to ask for help, because you’re usually the person who fixes everything for everyone else. It feels like having no one to talk to, no one to turn to, because those around you just assume that you are fine, that you can handle whatever life throws your way.

It feels like heartache. The kind that gets deep into your bones. The kind that can only come from feeling misunderstood, from feeling like your worth comes from being the strong one, the one no one ever worries about.

And that hurts.

That hurts in the rawest, deepest way, because no one notices just how lost you are. No one notices just how quiet you are. No one can hear your pounding heart. And the worst thing of all, is that no one really cares to notice. No one really cares to ask. No one really goes out of their way to take care of you for once, because you are the girl who is always okay. Who is always laughing, smiling.

You are the girl who is always “fine.”

And to them, you always will be.