Everything Is Okay

by Caroline Crilley

One of the cruelest parts of life is how everything is always okay.
No matter what horrors occur, everything continues on as usual.
Even though your insides are shattered, the clock keeps ticking on like normal.
Except time doesn’t feel normal anymore, it gets stuck or just slips away.
Teachers talk about homework as if it means anything anymore.
Jobs and chores still need doing, as if the ground hasn’t all but fallen away.
You draw into yourself, put up a facade and suffer silently, going through the motions of life.
Pretending everything is okay, because it is.
And maybe the horrors you endured were so devastating that all your small body could do to
protect you was play dead.
Maybe you don’t remember why every moment hurts, and why your insides don’t feel right.
Maybe all that’s left are shadows in your body and demons in your mind.
Or maybe the moments echo endlessly as you go about your day,
Pretending everything is okay, because it is.
At this moment, your body is safe.
The clock is ticking.
People are walking by like everything is okay.
Because it is.
But it shouldn’t be.
You should be screaming.
Everyone should be screaming.
The world should be screaming.
But it’s not.
Because everything is okay.

One of the most beautiful parts of life is how everything is always okay.
Your small body can endure things that no one ever should.
Your suffering becomes an edge, opening within you depths before unknown.
There is power in knowing how much you can take.
Have you been pushed to your limit, and then right past it,
Only to learn you could stretch so much further than you ever could have imagined?
To feel deeper and see more than many ever will.

But not without consequences.
There are scars and wounds in your body now that no one else can see.
You feel it in the closeness, and the gaps left in between.
They feel it when they reach for you, in drowning waves of pain.
Waves of rage that crash and break, ‘til no one else remains.
Or maybe you hold it on your own, trying to protect yourself and them.
Only to learn: there is no suffering worse than being all alone.
So you sit and you feel it,
Just a drop at a time.
You lean into others,
Just an inch at a time.
You hope to make it mean something, to let it change you.
Not in the ways it chooses, but in a shape that you design.
You use it to change the world.
Because everything is okay,
It always is.