eating me up

Gaby died of lung cancer at the age of 22. Before she went to hospital for the last time she visited her friends for a farewell. In a letter that she wrote during her last days she confided to my later wife that what was tearing at her most was having to comfort her boy friend and trying to uplift him. That's the private story my song will be based on.

The chorus may read:

it's eating me up
I'm fading away
the world's getting dimmer
from day to day
it's eating me up

As for the verses I only have sketches that have neither meter nor rhyme at the moment:

Oh, it's so exhausting
to have to comfort
your love and best friend
he's trying to be brave
but it hurts to see
the tears he's hiding

how much I long for
some sleep and some rest
while I'm awaiting
the blackness
behind the mist

There is a flow in the lines - except in "he's trying to be brave" - yet at the moment these lines are of no use in a song, i.e. they might be appropriate for a poem but not for song lyrics.

Next, I will keep on gathering ideas, phrases, and lines of text before I will tackle putting them into a structure that's viable for a song.