When Life Runs Out Of Bricks

Tomorrow.
Tomorrow is a scary thing.
A terrifying word,
A world or the unknown.
When did I turn 20? 21? 22?
Days blur.
Weeks blur.
Months, years, all blur.
Was that from yesterday,
Or was it the year before?
The future is an abstract concept,
That you can't understand,
Yet you are expected to know how to travel it.

How can you plan for each day?
Each week?
Each month, year, a whole life?
When each night you go to bed,
You don't know whether you'll be strong enough
To pull yourself out of it in the morning.
You don't know if you're going to end up on the streets,
Without a bed, a home, an income.
You don't know if your little sister will of succeeded
In killing herself before the night is up.
And you are unable to prevent any of it.

How can you trust anyone,
When you're barely able to trust yourself?
You don't know how to rely on others,
How to rely on yourself,
How to help others rely on you.
You don't understand how to ask for help,
Yet it's something you need
As you barely keep hold of yourself.
Even when you know what to say,
Fear of the response you'll get
Makes actually getting help near impossible.
Judgement.
Ridicule.
Dismissal.

My first day back at university,
For the start of year three,
I hid in the changing room,
Hoping nobody would find me before lesson started.
And I cried.
I cried and I cried,
Terrified to talk to people,
Classmates,
Friends,
Many I've known for years on end.
Scared of being ignored.
Being an annoyance.
Unwanted.
Invisible.
Alone.
Alone.
ALONE.

You've spent your life invisible,
So why except anyone to notice you.
The small things mean so much -
A simple 'like' on a website
Is enough to make your whole day,
Because SOMEBODY noticed you!
Someone acknowledged your existence,
If only for a moment,
If only for a second,
Before they're gone.
Carrying on with their day,
Forgetting you right away.
But so what!
That small piece of attention from a total stranger
Is validation enough.

Everything is difficult.
You're surrounded by people,
And none of them ACTUALLY understand
Just quite what it is that you're going through.
The simplest things for them,
You have to fight a war to do.
You're hollow and empty,
And if you don't fill your mind with meaningless distractions,
Then your depression will fill that gap.
Rather than being able to focus on anything productive,
You're filled with anxieties and stresses
And you find that you are not strong enough to fight anymore.

Comfort only comes from the worlds
Of fiction you indulge in;
Ones you create, perform, watch, read, get lost in,
Taking up
Every
Spare
Second you have
So that you don't have to think.
Forgetting and avoiding as many problems and responsibilities
That life shoves in your face as possible.
But you can't escape them for long.
Life has a funny way of letting them all build up while you aren't looking,
And then hitting you with them all at once,
Like a tonne of bricks raining down from above.
And there's nothing you can do to stop them.
It's now too late for that.
And so you curl up small,
And try to survive it,
Waiting for the day
When life runs out of bricks.