6 min read
mood: raw
🔇
Nobody Was Listening
I grew up without a voice. Not because I could not speak but because nobody was listening for mine. Every adult around me had already decided who I was, what I felt, and what I needed. My parents. My doctors. The church. Family. Everyone had a version of me and I was never asked if any of it was accurate.
I was strong. I was an example. I was pretty but needed work here and there. I should not be bothered by the way people looked at me. I should not be sad. I should just ignore it. Ignore the stares. Ignore the comments. Ignore my own feelings because feelings were inconvenient to the story they were telling about me.
I was strong. I was an example. I was pretty but needed work here and there. I should not be bothered by the way people looked at me. I should not be sad. I should just ignore it. Ignore the stares. Ignore the comments. Ignore my own feelings because feelings were inconvenient to the story they were telling about me.
🚪 No Say in Anything
🚪
No Say in Anything
Nobody ever sat me down and asked what do you think. What do you want. How does this make you feel. They just told me. Over and over. How to be. How to think. How to feel. And when you hear that enough times as a kid you stop trying to figure out your own answers because what is the point. Someone is going to hand you the answer before you even finish the question.
My medical life made it worse. I did not get to choose when I had surgery. I did not get to choose the doctor or the procedure or when I went back to school. Every major decision about my own body was made by someone else. I just showed up and did what I was told. That was my role. The patient. The compliant one. The kid who does not make this harder than it already is.
My medical life made it worse. I did not get to choose when I had surgery. I did not get to choose the doctor or the procedure or when I went back to school. Every major decision about my own body was made by someone else. I just showed up and did what I was told. That was my role. The patient. The compliant one. The kid who does not make this harder than it already is.
🎭 The Faker
🎭
The Faker
And that carried into everything. I stopped forming opinions because someone would just override them. I stopped expressing preferences because nobody was going to consider them anyway. I stopped saying how I really felt because the last thing anyone wanted was for the strong one to actually be struggling.
So I became a faker. A really good one. I learned to perform whatever version of me the room needed. Happy at church. Grateful at the hospital. Fine at school. Strong at home. I cycled through them so naturally that after a while I could not tell which one was real. Maybe none of them were.
So I became a faker. A really good one. I learned to perform whatever version of me the room needed. Happy at church. Grateful at the hospital. Fine at school. Strong at home. I cycled through them so naturally that after a while I could not tell which one was real. Maybe none of them were.
🔨 Building a Voice From Scratch
🔨
Building a Voice From Scratch
Now I am an adult and I am supposed to have a voice. I am supposed to know what I want, what I like, what I believe. But how do you build that from scratch when you spent your entire life being handed a script. It is still easier some days to let other people decide for me. To let someone else pick. To go along with whatever because going along is the only thing that ever felt safe.
I keep almost everything to myself. I hold my feelings in because sharing them still feels dangerous. I suffer alone because I do not want anyone to see what is actually underneath the performance. If they saw the real version of me I do not even know what they would find. I am not sure I know what they would find.
I keep almost everything to myself. I hold my feelings in because sharing them still feels dangerous. I suffer alone because I do not want anyone to see what is actually underneath the performance. If they saw the real version of me I do not even know what they would find. I am not sure I know what they would find.
""Finding My Voice
That is the part that scares me the most. It is not that I lost my voice. It is that I am not sure I ever had one. I was told who I was before I had a chance to figure it out for myself. And now I am an adult trying to find something I was never given the space to develop in the first place.
I am working on it. Slowly. Some days it is small things like saying what I actually want for dinner instead of just going with whatever someone else picks. Some days it is bigger like admitting to myself that I am not fine and that is okay. It is not fast. It is not linear. But for the first time in my life I am the one deciding who I am. Even if I do not have the full answer yet.
That is still more of a voice than I have ever had.