“Some pain is too deep for tears. It settles into silence and learns to live there.”
I think I understand that kind of pain more than I would like to admit. There have been things I’ve felt that I couldn’t cry about, couldn’t explain, and sometimes couldn’t even put into words for myself. So I learned to live with them quietly. I would get up, go through my day, speak to people, laugh when I was supposed to laugh, and carry on as if nothing was wrong.
Nobody watching me would have known.
And maybe that’s what makes it strange when someone asks me what the bravest thing I’ve ever done when no one was watching was. I don’t think it was some great achievement. I don’t think it was something people would applaud me for. I think it was simply getting through the moments where I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with everything I was feeling.
There were nights when I would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, letting my mind go everywhere it wanted to go. I would replay conversations, question people, question myself, question whether I mattered as much as I thought I did. Sometimes I would wonder whether I was being too much, whether I was expecting too much, whether I was simply someone people could keep around until they found something better.
I rarely said any of that out loud.
Instead, I became quiet.
I would disappear into my own thoughts, into music, into imagination, into whatever gave me somewhere else to be for a while. I could be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone. I could be smiling while something inside me was asking questions nobody else could hear.
And the worst part is that silence can become comfortable.
When you live with something long enough, you stop knowing what life would feel like without it. You start carrying the pain so naturally that you forget you are carrying it. You become good at functioning with it. Good at hiding it. Good at telling people you’re fine before they even have the chance to ask.
But sometimes I wonder what that has cost me.
How much of myself have I hidden just because I didn’t know how to explain what was happening inside me? How many times have I convinced myself that I didn’t need anyone because being alone was easier than feeling unwanted? How many times have I walked away from something before it had the chance to hurt me?
Because there is something unsettling about becoming so good at hiding your pain that even you can no longer tell whether you’ve healed or simply learned how to live around it.
Maybe it’s that nobody knows how much had to disappear just so I could look like I’m still here.
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