Maybe I’m not really sick anymore. Maybe I just learned it’s easier to say I am.
Maybe if I just tried again, got up on that horse again, I could be someone.
Maybe I was never sick to begin with, just sick of life.
Maybe I’m really better now, Maybe things are better now,
But I won’t give them or me a chance to grow, a chance to bloom, to afraid to fail
Again.
What will happen if I open the door, Open the door to life again?
What will happen if I step outside, step outside of my safe place again?
Step outside into the real world again, with expectations, obligations, and responsibilities?
Where I have to perform like the elephants at the zoo and the monkeys at the circus?
What if I make mistakes, What if I can’t perform anymore?
What if I can’t make the grade, fail to beat the score, can’t move fast enough anymore
Can’t keep up with the pace, find myself again failing the race.
Lose my place, keep trying anew, finding I can’t make a fit anywhere.
Things going wrong, haywire again, find myself stuck back inside
Unable to venture out, unable to win, the bar too high that was once so near.
Finding I’m back at the bottom, but this time there is no net
No one believes I can’t make it yet. They say I’ve had time enough
To get back into that groove, can’t keep quitting when it gets too tough.
No more support, no more kindness, no more safety net to catch me now.
End up back in my head, can’t get out ever again
Can’t leave my shelter, my safe space, I know now
No one will believe me if I try again and fail.
They will say she is just not ill, She is just too lazy
To do her share. She is selfish, expects the world to
Work for her and us to tell her so. She wants to wallow
In her despair, Brought on by her own failures.
The system will say she had her chance, that if she had been telling the truth
She never would have tried again. She just could have stayed inside, no one
Ever questioning the tide.
But maybe I was wrong, all those years ago…
Maybe I wasn’t really sick, just swallowed up in my own sadness,
In my inability to change my life. Maybe I just gave up, gave in,
To my inner world that said I’d never win.
Maybe I should have kept trying, and I would not be so stuck today
On whether I deserve a second chance at life, or whether I should stay.
Inside. Safe.
So I’ll never know if I could have won, Never know if I could do it again.
The risk is just too high, can’t be a failure all over again.
Once is enough, and done is done.