How are you doing?

Truly, how are you feeling?

Let me ask you an open and honest question, How are you? Really, how are you doing? feeling? 

Honesty is a hard thing to come by when you feel the world around you is all smoke and mirrors. You start to question if anything is being real or if it's just for show. We all wear some sort of mask, even the most real people out there. There is always something that we are hiding within ourselves, whether it be beautiful or ugly. 

If i were to answer this question with my full authenticity, and with a full raw heart I would say.

I'm not doing well. I feel like i am beginning to sink into that hole of sadness as I do every year around this time. My mind is constantly at battle with itself that I can hardly concentrate on things that classify as important. I feel lonely like no one fully knows or understands me because I too wear a mask. 

I've worn this mask for as long as I can remember. Always the quiet shy girl, the one who is kind and sweet. The truth is I'm so lonely that it actually hurts, the pain seeps deep within my bones.  I wish I could shake it off  easily but it's like a smog that envelopes me completely.  

I feel like a failure. 

I feel lost.

I feel like i've made no progress. 

I feel like every friendship i;ve had, has ended because of me not being good enough.

I don't feel like any one truly understands or gets me including myself.

I am in pain, so much pain it is suffocating me.

I am grief-stricken, for the person I once was. The happy, vibrant, beautiful loving soul.

I know that this is a time of transformation,  the burn is the fire purifying the wounds that are so deeply instilled in me that it's like i was born with them. 

 How do you shake off the feeling of never feeling like you were ever enough?

That even your family doesn't get you, they love you because they are your family and you were born into that love. But I catch myself wondering, would they even like me if i wasn't their daughter or sister or someone who was related to them. 

I don't know who I am anymore, I feel tattered and worn like an old doll that you've had since childhood. 

I feel betrayed, mostly by myself, for not being honest to myself for years about my unhappiness.

If I were to say this to you, a stranger, what would happen? 

Would you hug me, tell me my life isn't that bad, or would you just hold the space for me so that i can feel all of these things as you hold a young child?