"How are you holding up?"

My response: "Good question, I'm not sure either."

Really, I'm not sure how I'm doing.   When I am engaged in something or around people, my mood could be described as happy, especially if I like the people I'm with.  But whenever I get home or otherwise 'alone', my mood shifts dramatically and I'm just staring.  Or immersed in a book, which isn't new information if you have been following this blog for a while.  I'm always finding something to hide in - some other person's imaginary life that I can hide in so I don't have to think about mine.  I'm likely on the verge of tears constantly, but I'm trained much better than that and when I need to stop crying and go do something, the switch is almost automatic.  I just decide to be numb and then I go do the thing, and the act continues.  I'm not even sure anymore if my emotions are real or fake.  When I'm with people, is that just acting, or am I truly being amused by the situation and the statements?  I don't know anymore.  And I'm tired of the question/greeting, "How are you?"  I know they all expect me to say "Good" and even though I say something less good than "good", they still don't realize that I'm lying and if they do realize, they don't care enough to want to understand the dark anger and bitterness living within me, so they go and pretend that I am doing good, because it makes things so much simpler.  Everything is an act.

I am in the middle of an emotional break down.  People keep saying that I'll get back up, but what if I don't? "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  But what if it has been slowly killing me this whole time, and I just haven't noticed?  I haven't been getting stronger - I feel weaker by the day.  Everyone praises me for my strength - a good friend of mine didn't realize I was on the brink of tears and she said something jokingly which really did lead me to tears.  She apparently looks up to me so much that she thought that nothing could break me.  HA!  I'm apparently such a good actor that she thought that I was in a happy mood when in reality I was on the verge of breaking and her comment made me break.

And the worst part is I feel like I can't talk to my family about my problems.  I'm not sure how many of them read this blog, but even if they do, notice that I didn't mention any reasons behind my emotional break down besides the obvious, my dead son's birthday just passed and just merely the fact that my heart has been punched through so many times I'm surprised it's still beating.  Even when I tell my good friends, I feel like I'm saying things that I shouldn't be.  I'm in a cage, and I don't know how to get out of it.