The Quiet Survival

No one ever talks about the quiet survival.

The kind where you wake up,

not because you want to,

but because your body betrays you

with another breath.

No one speaks of the war it takes

just to stand,

to sit,

to pretend you are alive

when inside you are unraveling thread by thread.

There are no parades

for the nights you do not end,

for the days you drag yourself through the motions,

your smile cracked porcelain,

your voice rehearsed.

The world only praises the dramatic victories,

the visible resurrections.

But no one claps for the silent battle —

the choice not to pick up the bottle,

not to open the drawer,

not to vanish.

Quiet survival leaves no scars anyone can see.

It leaves you hollow-eyed,

aching,

wondering if endurance is a gift

or just another kind of punishment.

Still, it happens.

Night after night.

Day after day.

An uncelebrated persistence.

And maybe that is what makes it so brutal:

that the hardest survival

is the kind no one ever sees.