A Quite Place

listen.

Some things are better left unsaid, put into the quiet space in the back of your mind where no one truly sees or hears. To open your mouth and let those words out feels like reaching for something too high, placed on a shelf where only certain people can reach.

In that quiet space in your mind, you run in circles, feeling the words etch along the crevices of your tongue, but you bite it down, sinking your teeth into flesh. You know it’s better to stay silent than to speak up. The thoughts of what ifs, of what was being held inside your mind, continue to wreck that inner child. All you want to do is reach out for her little hand and kiss it, tell her that everything will be okay.

You want to tell her she’s going to have a voice one day.
You want to hold her in your arms, keep her safe, change the course of history, but you can’t, and that ache sinks deep into your soul.

You feel helpless watching her from afar, sitting in a dark room, holding her tiny knees to her chest. Tears drip into her lap, staining her pink fluffy dress, a dress that feels like it belongs to someone else, not her.

Sometimes the words you want to say almost escape. You have to hide away, shut the door, ashamed, scared, torn down to the bones that make up your skeleton. If you say certain things, darkness could come. Bad, terrible things could happen. So it’s better to put those burning words into a small jar, placing it as far back in your brain as you can. But sometimes the fire inside that jar heats up, creating wounds that seep through your eyes, telling a story no one is able to hear because they can’t hear your voice.

Years of this creates a lasting effect where you believe everything will eventually be over, but you’re wrong. You create your own reality, one that’s hard to see out of. It’s an entrapment that feels consuming, drawing and suffocating all the things that make you lose your breath. That’s what happens when you don’t let the words out, the ones you truly want to release.

All you want is to be normal, to fit in, to be like everyone else. You morph yourself into a character that feels unfamiliar. Is it truly you, or is it a stranger trying to be seen? I guess you won’t know unless you want to. But why would you ever want to face it? Why make it known to the world, knowing it takes courage? Are you sure you have enough?

That’s what they want you to think.
You’re not enough.
You’re not worthy.
Your presence is nothing more than a speck on this earth.

Sometimes it feels like the truth. Everyone has their own lives, millions of us, yet we’re all so consumed by our own problems that it’s hard to see our brothers and sisters in such a broken, skewed world. It feels like a silent battle you have to fight just to be known.

You don’t want attention, but you do. Attention is affection, and affection means love. You can’t get that if you stay quiet. Quiet people aren’t always seen. And you don’t want to be quiet. You want to speak. You have so much to say, so much to offer, yet you’re the only one stopping yourself. Did you know that?

You are the driver of your own ship. You decide whether you sink or float. You only lose that power when you give it away to the people who hurt you.

Sometimes it feels like the things that happened to you seep into every part of your life. Sex, drugs, friends, family, all blending together, confusing, strange, painful, because all you want is to feel normal. But normal isn’t real. It’s just a word that traps hope inside a closed box, one you’re left inside.

When you had sex with guys, it felt like it was just happening. Your body wasn’t there. You floated above it, watching, faking pleasure to make them feel good. You didn’t feel good, but you did it over and over again because it felt like a release, or was that just another lie? You couldn’t come, so you faked it. You let their pleasure matter more. Let them use your body, because you deserved it, right?

You finally woke up from that dream, drowning in poison that slid down your throat, burning deep wounds into the delicate flesh of your vocal cords, the very gift you have to show the world.

The idea of hurting yourself back then felt good. It was a release from pain, but also a cry, a scream into a black hole, hoping someone might see, just for an instant, that you weren’t okay, that you hadn’t been for a long time. You forgot what it felt like to be okay, carefree, happy. Those memories were distant, barely reachable by the tips of your fingers.

So you took the darkness, held it against your skin. The hair on your thighs stood upright, your body bracing for impact, knowing what you were about to do to it. Your body didn’t deserve that. All it wanted was love and care. Instead, you took a blade to it, carving words into your skin that you couldn’t say out loud.

The wounds became a release, pent-up feelings finally finding a way out before they imploded, before they tore your veins apart, before crimson blood sprayed across smooth white walls. You didn’t want that.

They would see.
You wanted them to see.
You wanted them to know.

But you didn’t want to know. You didn’t want to see. All you wanted was to hide, to run away from the danger you carried inside yourself, every hour spent in that quiet space in your mind.