03/16/2026
The Truth
I was endured into shape.
A small body learning too early
that silence was safer than truth.
I learned shame before I learned language.
It settled into my bones like a second gravity, pulling my eyes downward, teaching my soul to apologize for taking up space.
No one asked what I felt.
But I did feel, too much, too deep, too sacred.
Too soft.
Too dramatic.
Too something that needed to be less.
So I became less.
I folded my spirit into something acceptable, something that would not provoke, would not invite, would not be seen.
Because being seen had already cost me too much.
I carried voices inside me like laws,
unquestioned, absolute, even when they broke me.
And my own voice…it became a stranger.
A distant echo I no longer trusted
to keep me safe.
So I pleased.
I adapted.
I dissolved.
I became what was needed, again and again, until there was no clear edge between who I was and what was required of me.
And still, somewhere beneath the ruin, beneath the silence, beneath the carefully constructed self that survived it all, there was a pulse.
Faint.
Unreachable.
Untamed.
Not the girl they silenced.
Not the shame they planted.
Not the fear that shaped my days.
Something older.
Something sacred.
A spirit that did not agree to what was done to it.
A knowing that whispered, even when I could not hear it:
“This is not your truth.”
“You were not made for this breaking.
You were not born to carry their darkness.
You were taught to forget your light.”
And maybe, just maybe, the path back is not about becoming someone new, but about daring, slowly, to listen to the voice that survived when everything else was taken.