But what are you supposed to say? Where do you even begin? How do you explain something that has lived inside of you for so long that you’ve built an entire life around not speaking it?
How do you tell people that the mask was always just a mask? That the smile was practiced, the strength they admired was survival and that everything you’ve done to keep moving forward has contradicted the truth so deeply that if it ever slipped out, it would sound like a lie?
They take what isn’t theirs and leave you carrying the weight of it. They invade every corner of who you are until there’s so little of you left that you’re afraid to let anyone get close enough to see it. Close enough to hear it.
They teach you to question yourself. To doubt your memories, your feelings, your own truth. And after a while, the silence becomes its own kind of home.
So you become guarded. Not because you want to be but because it feels safer. You build walls so high that nothing can get in. The problem is, nothing can get out either.
But still, you love.
God, how you love.
You give pieces of yourself away even when you’re running on empty. You keep showing up. You keep trying. You keep hoping that one day someone will see past the walls without tearing them down.
But the damage lingers. It follows you into every relationship, every conversation, every moment where someone gets too close. And sometimes the fear is so much louder than the truth that you push people away before they ever have the chance to stay.
Because when you’ve spent years hiding the truth to survive, there comes a point where you don’t know whether you’re protecting it, or protecting everyone else from it.