KNEE BRACE PRESS

A place for stories about chronic illness, disability, mental health, and neurodivergence.

I was not fine

By

I resent those who did not suspect
the truth when I was young
I was broken, wrong,
an alien
The truth still seems unreal
I still doubt it like
when I was young and they said
“you’re fine,
it’s all in your head”

I resent the slow march of progress
that made me waste two decades
feeling broken,
wrong,
an alien
because nothing else made sense
The truth is
I can’t separate the mask
the scripts
the rules
from who I am because I don’t know
where they end and I begin

I resent being 34 with no sense of self
beyond the trail of burned bridges,
broken trust,
and unfinished dreams
left in the wake of my meltdowns,
spirals,
and mistakes

Contributor

  • A white person with yellow-rimmed glasses and long, blonde hair. Their shirt reads, "THE FUTURE IS NONBINARY."

    Jess Barselow lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with three cats. For years, Jess only wrote and edited formal, technical academic papers, but they recently found their way back to poetry as a way to process and express their complicated feelings about death and neurodivergence.