The Inner Critic

There is a voice that lives beside my pain,
small at first—
a whisper tucked beneath aching bones
and tired muscles.

It arrives on the quiet days,
the canceled plans days,
the staring-at-the-ceiling days,
the I tried my best and still could not days.

It asks me questions
I never would ask another soul.

Why are you still resting?
Why can’t you do more?
Why is everyone else moving forward
while you are learning how to survive another hour?

It keeps score
of unfinished chores,
unanswered messages,
forgotten tasks,
and all the ways my body
does not behave like I begged it to.

It calls me lazy
for carrying mountains
inside a body no one else can see.

But pain already asks enough of me.

Pain already steals enough.

I do not need another thief
living inside my chest,
turning suffering into shame.

So I am learning
to answer that voice differently.

I am learning to say:

I am not weak
because my body has limits.

I am not failing
because today required rest.

I am not less
because survival took everything I had.

And maybe the bravest thing
a chronically ill heart can do
is not to silence the inner critic completely—

but to become louder than it.