It's quiet here in the countryside, but inside me, it's louder than ever. I've been trying to hold myself together as if my soul were made of glass barely glued at the seams.
For days, I've worn the silence like a blanket, convincing myself that peace lives in stillness, but I know now that stillness can also be a prison.
The darkness has returned-not as a storm, but as a shadow that wraps itself around my ribs and whispers that I'll never escape.
Again, I find myself here, caught in the loop of sleepless nights and invisible battles.
I've tried to fight it.
I devoured books like they were medicine, watched dramas until my eyes blurred, hoping someone else's story could silence mine.
But nothing works anymore.
The pain remains, echoing in the corners of my memory, where shame hides behind a moment I wish I could erase.
It was just a "small" touch.
That's what they'd say.
But how do you explain the kind of touch that stains?
The kind that doesn't leave bruises on the skin, but bruises everything underneath?
I try not to remember it, but my body does.
My heart does.
His face plays in my mind like a cursed lullaby, repeating every time I close my eyes.
How could he?
How could they?
The ones who were supposed to be safe, the ones who wore familiar faces-the ones I trusted.
Their words, their laughter, their presence now sting like salt on wounds I never asked for.
Do they think I am so small, so low, that I don't deserve respect?
Did they forget that I am a woman?
That I am a human being with dignity, with a voice-even if I can't always find the courage to use it?
It sickens me how easily I've learned to smile in front of them, to play the role of someone unbothered.
I stand beside the very people who hurt me, pretending I'm untouched, while inside I'm screaming.
It hurts to act kind when every part of me wants to scream in disgust.
It hurts more to realize that I let them speak their awful words, throw their stares, and still I stayed-silent.
But that's the kind of silence you learn when you've been taught that speaking up only brings more pain.
And so I carry it.
I carry the disgust.
I carry the weight of pretending.
I carry the ache of standing in front of someone who took a piece of my peace and smiling like I don't remember.
They don't know me.
They know my name, but they don't know my soul.
They see my face, but not the shadows hiding behind it.
They praise my calm, unaware it's built on buried screams.
And now, the darkness that I've fought so long has finally found its way back in.
It no longer asks for permission.
It just arrives and stays.
Maybe that's where I'll find myself again-inside the silence, inside the shadow, inside the place where I no longer have to explain my pain.
But even as I break, even as I fall deeper into this quiet abyss, I find myself whispering a prayer I barely mean: Lord, forgive them. Because even now, I still want to believe that there's goodness in people.
That someday, the world will finally understand that being human should mean being humane.
And until then, I carry the pain, the silence, the fire-and I keep writing, because even if they never hear my voice, I know the page always will.
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POV
Non-FictionLife often presents itself as a series of hurdles, each one taller than the last. These hurdles, though daunting, are not meant to break us but to shape us into who we are meant to be. It is through our darkest nights that we gain the strength to fa...
