Fake happiness is the worst kind of sadness.

It’s the kind that consumes every part of your being. It slowly eats away at all the happiness you have.

That’s why our first instinct is to run away.

We all have this similar thinking that, if we run away from our problems eventually they will disappear and we can act like they never even existed. But the reality is that it starts to catch up with us. It grows bigger each day we ignore it, leave it, and “forget” about it. It occupies our mind until it’s all we can think about. But we always try to take the road that we think would be easier for us in the present, not thinking about the consequences we’ll have to face in the long run. We hide. This is how it feels like to be hiding all your life.

Every bit of anger and frustration is bottled up and kept away in the deepest, darkest chambers of your body. You push down feelings you hope will never resurface because it’s just easier to hide it than to deal with the consequences.

You want everyone to see how carefree and happy you are because you’re scared that if they see right through you, they’ll have the opportunity to hurt you even more.

You shield your pride and dignity by painting a smile on your face so that the people around you can’t affect you and cause you pain.

You’d like to think that if you show them that you’re not vulnerable to the pain they make you feel, then they won’t be able to bring more damage to the situation.

But if you analyze it, it only makes you feel worse. You’re smiling on the outside, but on the inside, your armor starts to crack more and more each day.

You hide your sadness and pain through self-destruction. You inflict pain on yourself to make you forget about all the troubles you have to deal with. It helps you cope with your emotional issues and it also distracts you from the situation at hand. When you hurt yourself, you usually take it as a form of punishment because you think you’ve done something wrong, or you take it as an outlet to let go of all the emotions you’ve been trying so hard to keep to yourself. You numb yourself so much to the feeling of pain that you don’t even notice that you are also numbing yourself to the feeling of happiness.

As much as possible, you try to be the bigger person. You hide your judgments because you know how it feels to be rejected. You hide behind fake personalities just so you can be accepted by society. You hold yourself back because you’re scared of the things you’re capable of doing. You’re scared that if you fight back, you’ll lose the whole battle. You’re scared to speak out and hear the criticism of others. You’re scared to stand up for yourself because you don’t want to lose people along the way. You’re a people-pleaser. You fear disappointing the people you care about. That’s why you’re so willing to do them any favors, even if you know you’re already being taken advantage of. You don’t want to disappoint anyone because you know how it feels to be let down and you wouldn’t want anyone else to feel that way.

You hide behind the ghosts of your past. There’s something in the past that you haven’t let go of yet. There’s someone in the past that you can’t seem to forgive just yet. There’s something in the past that you can’t seem to embrace. Those are the things that are keeping you from moving on. They keep you from breaking out of your shell and living a life free from your past. They haunt you and pull you back to those memories you buried deep within your mind. Your head starts to flood with all the bad memories and incidents that you don’t want to remember. And suddenly, you’re looking for a way to run away from them all over again.

You hide behind the things you love.

You hide your face between pages of a book, getting lost in the swing and swirl of words.

You hide yourself behind the poems you write, which you think no one will ever read.

You hide yourself in the drawings you make, each having its own story behind it.

You hide yourself in a room watching your favorite movie, feeling lonely because you have no one to share the moment with.

You hide yourself in past experiences, letting them define who you are.

You hide yourself behind a calm façade, because you’re scared of how much bottled up emotions you have in you.

And you just know that one day, it’s all going to burst and it won’t be pretty.

You hide behind masks of smiles and laughter. You hide behind convincing faces that let everyone know you’re alright.

But behind that mask is a silent cry for help.

You’ve been hiding for so long that all you want in the world is to be found.

-Mica T.