Programmed To Survive Damage

PTSD

Pain That Stays Dormant

I am the informant

Silence they will not warrant

After having the balls to torment

It is all fun and games

Until the masks fall apart

There was a heavy cost of my heart

A perpetual price that I pay

Unlike them I can't walk away

From the reality they try to avoid

A truth they actually can not destroy

While they plan their imaginary war

There are real casualties they ignore

The blood they never need to see

With their privilege to look away from me

They want a martyr, a story to give?

I am the cost I have yet to forgive

How I could have

Would have

Should have

Had every reason

To live

The past is not a memory

It’s a place I can’t escape

One sound, one touch, I’m pulled beneath

Just enough oxygen remains out of reach

I can tell myself it’s over now

But my body calls me a liar

Here comes the aura before the seize

And I’m back inside the fire

It’s not just a seizure

It's my body’s revenge

I became the casualty

Of a war I can’t avenge

My vision fades

I fall to the floor

A reminder I'm a prisoner of their war

Survival mode is what I call theft

And then afterwards carved out of what little was left

A martyr without a grave

A life they used but wouldn’t save

Bled for a cause that made me a slave

Built from my pain

Trained to behave

Under whatever stupid name they gave

My pain is their prize

My truth with their lies made a compromise

To never look each other in the eyes

Prisoner of time

Slave to the damage

Built to endure

But not to manage

My jaw's always clenched

My heart is ravaged

No peace, no rest

Just war’s baggage

Body’s wrecked

But fuck the bandage

Prisoner of time

Slave to the damage

The pain I keep being given

Endless days my body's reliving

While my mind betrays my will to live

My body betrays my mind sitting still

A gift I never asked to take

While my mind fights to stay awake

And they tell me time will heal

But time's just a concept

While the damage is real

Programmed to push past any pain

Body is broken, still obeys the strain

Rest is a myth, still standing at attention

I remain on alert, I stand with intention

You could stab me and while I bleed

I'll swallow the scream, silence my need

I feel the burn, I hear the screaming

But weakness won't allow me to speak it

My body anguished, but my face stays still

A mask of control, though the pain is real

The cuts and the burns, the ache in my bones

But I show no reaction, so I stand alone

Stoic in silence, I betray what I feel

As if the suffering's not mine to reveal

My body’s a warzone, my mind’s a prison

But I dare not react, no matter the vision

A battlefield etched into my mind

A prisoner in my own insides

On repeat of what I survived

The shit keeps coming, never quits

To a war not my own I have to submit

To a past that won’t let go

It's a debt I can't pay and never owed

Thoughts don’t listen, they detonate

Tripwires in all of my cells are laced

No safety here, no "at ease"

A ghost wearing my face

Marching forward on shattered knees

Strength? No. Just survival

A body conditioned to ignore pain's signal

With a mind that has no white flag to wave

Built to endure, not to be saved

Done? I wish I was out.

But in war you don’t clock out

PTSD

Suffering engraved deep inside of me

I am now a machine in the fray

My body’s broken it just learned to obey

My own flesh is a battlefield

Conditioning’s deep, my mind is of steel

My body’s a cage, and it’s all too real

So long as there's none of me left

Then there is no more of me to heal

Every breath, every fucking thought

If their war is over why am I still caught?

I smell the past in random places

Haunting memories tied to faces

Taste metal when there's no blood

Buried alive in yesterday’s flood

But fuck it, pain is just a thought

I’ll drag this carcass keep on moving ‘til I rot

Override is my religion

A damn machine that don’t need permission

How do you stop what’s burned inside,

While something in me won’t let me die?

They almost completely destroyed her

Hunted for weakness, but failed to deter

I became the war they claimed was over

Even when they've closed that door

I am the one conditioned for more

And that's what nobody was ready for

The battle they started they can not ignore