Evidence Of Things Unseen

I am really so very tired of being told that I must prove I have mental illness.  It's not as if I can point to a place on my body and say "Look, see, there?  See that broken, damaged, bruised, twisted, destroyed, missing thing?"

I can't SHOW you a mental illness.  

I can show you what it does to me, but the illness itself is invisible.

I can tell you about my struggle every. single. day. to keep climbing the fucking mountain carrying my heavy-ass fucking basket of stones, sometimes with nothing but grim determination not to falter or fail, not to break my word and give up and let the mountain send me tumbling down into the abyss that dogs my heels waiting to swallow me whole, but the illness itself is invisible.

I can refer you to the rare few people who get to see it when it has me in its teeth, the very rare few people who I trust enough NOT to past the smile on my lips and falsify the light in my eyes, the rare, special few people whom I permit to hear it in my voice when I am worn down near to nothing and still have to carry on, carry on, carry on, but the illness itself is invisible.

I'm too busy trying not to die from it to show proof of its existence, and if I am not to be believed about it then there's not a damned thing I can do to convince anyone and I haven't the time, haven't the energy, haven't the strength to keep proving to anyone who simply won't believe me because the illness itself is invisible.