Just Swim With Me

A poem about emotional distance and connection

By Neurospicy Poems

Character: Alexithymia

Sometimes,

I am a well of sadness –

deep water,

out of reach.

I lean over.

No reflection.

No ripple.

No relief.

Other times,

I’m the waterfall –

feelings crashing through

before I know they’re there,

drenching everything.

I apologise

for being soaked.

And for the spray.

And sometimes,

I’m the watcher –

not in the water at all.

Detached.

Dissociated.

Observing my pain

as if it belongs to someone else.

Sometimes,

I smile while I’m drowning –

a reflex,

like sunlight skimming

a storm-lit surface.

Pain bubbles up,

but I laugh it off,

and they laugh too.

They think it’s a joke.

But it’s not.

I am dead calm –

still water

holding a quiet depth beneath.

I want to be understood –

not fixed,

just felt.

To hand someone my storm

without them running.

To have them stay,

and hold the space.

So I study people

like the weather –

tracking shifts

in tone and temperature,

reading clouds

in their expressions.

They breeze through conversation

while I scan the horizon

for change.

They get to just be.

I am always becoming –

too much,

or not enough,

never quite

meeting the moment.

So I hold it in

until the cracks appear.

And then it pours.

And they look at me

as though it came from nowhere.

But I have always been water –

carrying this flood

beneath the surface,

waiting

for someone

who knows how to swim.

Not drown.

Not row away.

Just swim – with me. --- © Neurospicy Poems 2025 — All Rights Reserved

Shared under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (no edits, no commercial use).

Part of the Neurodivergent Inner Voice Framework™ and the Neurodivergent Voice Method™.

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