Hidden Torment

They say they love you but not the scars,

Not the midnight ache that tears you apart.

Not the fractured soul nor the silent screams,

That linger in shadows of broken dreams.

They cherish the mask, the polished facade,

The one you’ve sculpted with trembling hands,

A porcelain self they demand that you wear,

Yet it crumbles beneath the weight of despair.

To be loved for the mask and never the core,

Leaves the soul starving and yearning for more.

And in the stillness, when night steals your breath,

You wonder if peace can only come with death.

For it's hard to be loved for what you are not,

Harder still to face the battles you’ve fought,

Alone, unheard, and forever unseen,

Exhausted by who you must always pretend to have been.

-aubs

07-06-24

In the poem, Hidden Torment, I express the deep anguish of living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and the unbearable weight of not being truly seen or loved for who I am. People love the version of me that I must tirelessly craft, the one that’s acceptable, polished, and palatable to them. But the real me, the raw, fractured self beneath the surface, is left in the dark, unloved and unacknowledged. The scars I carry, both physical and emotional, the nightly pain that keeps me awake, and the silent screams of my shattered dreams, they are all invisible to those around me.

This mask, though, is fragile. It’s a façade I’ve painstakingly sculpted with trembling hands, but it’s always on the verge of breaking under the crushing weight of my despair. The constant effort of pretending exhausts me, leaving me starved for a deeper kind of love, the kind that sees my soul, the real me, in all its pain and complexity.

Yet, that love never comes, and in the quiet, suffocating moments of the night, I find myself wondering if peace can only be found in death. The loneliness of being unseen, unheard, and forced to pretend is almost too much to bear. I am exhausted, not just by my struggles but by the endless charade of being someone I am not.

This poem is a cry for recognition, for someone to love not the mask but the true self behind it, scars and all. It is an exploration of the loneliness and alienation that comes with having BPD, and the silent battles I fight each day just to survive in a world that prefers the illusion to the reality of who I am.