broken armor

i'm good at laughing. i'm good at smiling and deflecting and pretending nothing's wrong, but sometimes i toss and turn in my sleep once the lights are off and the camera flashes have faded from my memory. once the words have made their way past my thick skin and straight for my heart.

that's the thing about having thick skin that no one tells you: you can put up with a lot, but once the armor is broken you feel every single thing, all at once. you feel not just the verbal assault that broke the armor in the first place, but everything else that it had been holding back, like the double take someone did to you at the mall, and the embarrassment of wearing the wrong thing, and the realization that maybe you're not as okay with being second-best as you thought you were, and- and-

and its all too much, all too quickly, so you shut down. you toss and turn and wonder if anyone has ever loved you at all because if they did then how did they let you get this bad? do they even realize how they hurt you? is your façade really that good or do they just pretend to believe you so they don't have to deal with the chore that you have become?

you'll never find an answer to these questions, though, because you'll never ask. instead you'll just patch up your armor where it broke and go out to do it all over again, fighting in battles you are not equipped for with armor being held together by nothing more than a sheer force of will. but it's fine! after all, you'll be doing it with a smile on your face and a laugh at the tip of your tongue, so no one will ever be the wiser, including yourself.