Why do they see the anger but never ask where it came from? Why do they see the despise, the bitterness, the distance, and suddenly that becomes the story of who I am? They see the version of me that came after everything, but they never saw the death of the person I was before. Nobody asks what happened between the person they once knew and the person standing in front of them now. Maybe because it is easier to see what is visible than to search for what disappeared.
All this time, my voice was becoming quieter than it was ever supposed to be. It didn’t happen in one day. Nobody woke up and told me to stop speaking. It happened slowly. A conversation here where it was easier to agree. A moment there where saying how I felt would have caused more problems. Eventually, silence became less of a choice and more of a language. “Yes” became easier than explaining. “It’s okay” became easier than telling the truth. And before I knew it, I had become fluent in a language that was slowly removing me from myself.
So by the end, I didn’t know when I was agreeing because I wanted to and when I was agreeing because I had forgotten that I was allowed to want something different. I would wait for the right moment to speak, only to realise that the moment never really came. And when silence becomes your norm, even having something to say can begin to feel like an interruption. You start asking yourself whether your thoughts are important enough to be heard. Whether your feelings are worth bringing into the room. Whether speaking will change anything at all.
Maybe that’s typical of me. Maybe I just became too used to the character I was supposed to play. The quiet one. The understanding one. The one who agrees. The one who watches everything but says nothing. The one who always sees both sides. The one who doesn’t make things difficult. The one who can take it. And perhaps that was my greatest mistake. Becoming so good at carrying things that people forgot I could become tired. Becoming so understanding that nobody thought to understand me. Becoming so quiet that my silence was mistaken for peace.
Oh, how the great have fallen and still act righteous.
Maybe that’s the tragedy of it all. The people who speak about understanding while never trying to understand what happened to you. The people who ask why you’ve changed but were present while the changing was happening. The people who call you angry without remembering how long you tried to remain calm. Sometimes I wonder whether they truly never saw it, or whether seeing it would have required them to admit that they played a part in it.
Maybe that’s why letting go is so difficult.
Because it was a better play than anything that could have ever been scripted. Every character knew their role. Every conversation had its lines. Every silence had a purpose. And I played my part so well that eventually I started believing the character was me. Maybe that is what happens when you perform for too long. You stop knowing where the acting ends and where you begin.
Ohhh, what a pinnacle of art it was. Until the rotting side of life became impossible to ignore. Until the things I refused to say began speaking through my anger. Until the silence became heavier than the conversations.
Until my mind drifted so far away that leaving began to feel less like an ending and more like the final scene I had been waiting to perform.
And still, the truth was always in plain sight.
It was there in the pauses before I answered. It was there in the way I stopped asking for things. It was there in every “yes” that should have been a “no.” It was there in the moments I laughed when nothing was funny. It was there in how I slowly became a spectator in my own life.
but who saw it ?
Just another pillar passing through the sands of time. Will anyone remember the person underneath it? Or will they only remember the character I become? ….
Leave a Reply