What I Didn't Say

This is the aftermath. The part no one prepares you for because it looks normal. There is no closure. There is performance. There is a script. You’re expected to follow it quietly. To indicate functionality. To move on schedule. To make it easier for them. Grief is acceptable only when it doesn’t disrupt expectations.

How do you keep your heart soft in a world like this. One that misreads survival as strength. That punishes anything too visible, too slow, too sincere. You try not to turn to stone. You try to hold something open, even while being discarded. You tell yourself staying soft is its own kind of resistance. Some days that sounds true. Some days it sounds like something people say to keep you pliable.

I struggled with hardness for years. I still do. To be soft is so unacceptable it begins to feel pathological. Softness unsettles people. It delays meetings. It forgets how to make small talk. It notices too much and recovers too slowly. I learned to mask it in tone, in schedule, in syntax. I built structure around the softness. That worked, until it didn’t.

In chemistry, softness is measured by how easily a material deforms under pressure. The softest known substance is talc, a silicate that crumbles without resistance. But it still leaves a trace. Even talc deposits evidence. I used to think softness was fragility. Now I know it’s exposure. A surface quality. The willingness to retain proof.

Some things I still don’t say out loud. Observation is safer than participation. To speak is to enter the scene. Entering the scene renders you legible. Legibility demands explanation. To explain yourself is to give up the silence that protected you. And once you are legible, you can be corrected. Visibility invites interpretation. Interpretation distorts. Once the frame is gone, so is your safety. This is how I remain intact.

Here is what I didn’t say: He isn’t here. This broke something permanent. You hurt me, and I’m still waiting for you to notice. Take this pain and give it to someone else. I am not okay. This is too much. I don’t want to try again. I don’t want to be brave. Grief is not growth. Loving you wrecked me. I did everything right, and still. My life as I knew it is over. You don’t get to walk away clean. You should’ve stayed. I should’ve screamed. I don’t want resilience. I want relief. I want the past back. I want my life back. I want my children back. I want someone to fix it. I want someone to blame. I want the screaming to matter. I want someone to witness this. I want someone to say it’s real. It’s not fair. Life is cruel. I did not agree to this. I can’t carry it. I don’t want to carry it. I am tired of carrying it. Stop hurting me. Please stop hurting me. I never wanted to be this strong. I never wanted to learn this much. I never wanted to go on without them. I want to forget. I want to be forgotten. I want to disappear. I want to be held. I want to be small. I want to be undone. I want to be spared. I want to stop loving because loving hurts and nothing ever stays and I can’t keep doing this.

I kept quiet. That was the only control I had left. I still do. There is criticism if you speak. There is discomfort if you don’t. Either way, it costs you something. Either way, you’re the one who has to live with it. Why do we do it. Why do we become versions of ourselves we wouldn’t recognize in private. Why does convenience so often replace truth. Why do we mirror what’s around us instead of returning to what’s internal. At some point, we stop asking who we are and start asking who will be most acceptable. Because many people don’t know what they’re asking you to survive. They want your containment, not your context. They want you to stay understandable, even after your life stopped making sense. Until it happens to them, they believe suffering follows a sequence. They think survival is a sign that the worst part is over. But what survives is often what was never said. So much of this stayed unspoken. Not because I didn’t have the words. Because silence didn’t require explanation. Because reaction is a kind of risk. Because being understood is not always a relief. Because saying it doesn’t undo it. But writing, at least, makes it visible. This is what I couldn’t say.