From the notebook
The handwritten lyric page
Invisible War
Inside my head there’s a hurricane,
lists on lists, never-ending chains.
I look fine,
but I’m breaking inside.
I’m not lazy,
I’m not weak.
Invisible war—and I’m stitched from the scars. ♡
Behind the song
The story inside it
“I’m surviving a storm no one can see.”
I wrote Invisible War about the distance between how a life looks and how it feels to live inside it. People can see a smile and assume I am okay, while my mind is racing, my body is hurting, and I am using everything I have just to make it through an ordinary day.
The song moves through the extremes that rarely fit into a simple explanation: hypomania that will not let my brain stop, depression that makes movement feel impossible, OCD loops, insomnia, PTSD triggers, and chronic pain. None of those battles disappear because someone else cannot see them.
Invisible War is my refusal to call survival laziness or weakness. I may look fine while my body and mind collide, but I am still fighting, still carrying my scars, and still becoming. The song asks people to believe the pain they cannot see—and reminds anyone living it that their battle is real.
— Caitlin