We’re fine.

Aside from the constant feeling that something bad is going to happen at any given moment.

The constant need to be approving in everyone's eyes, even if it means when we get home we scrub until we bleed, because what we had to do to get that approval was so unlike us we just feel dirty to the bone.

We’re fine.

We’re so fine that even though a smile is just a smile these days and a friendly hello hits us with nothing we continue to greet it as if it does. When everyone else says “you don't look sad” because our own smile is the only thing they see, because they're not looking in our eyes and if they are they're not looking deep enough.

They're hearing our voice but they're not listening to it. They're scanning over the hand in our pockets that is fiddling with anything its fingers can wrap around so that we can feel something, but, all they see is us pulling out the money to pay for our drinks.

Those drinks that fill us up in our stomachs but show us how empty we still are when there's nothing left in the cup. That feeling that hurts so much to physically look at that we buy another so we don't have too.

WE’RE FINE!

They don't hear what's being screamed in those two little words.

They don't feel what we are feeling when its spoken.

They just smile, and say “I’m glad, I’m fine too.”