What if we just said it?
Silence isn’t just absence. It’s an active force, like gravity, weighing us down until we just surrender to its pressure. I’ve seen it in conversations where people stop mid-sentence, unsure if their truth is safe here. I’ve felt it in rooms where grief hums just beneath the surface, everyone pretending they’ve moved on. I’ve worn it myself like a heavy coat, shielding the softest parts of me from people who mistake honesty for instability.
We rarely admit how much silence we’ve absorbed. We learn early that certain truths (our desire, our rage, our grief) must be edited for public consumption. Not just to protect others, but to protect ourselves from what they might do with the unfiltered version.
Sometimes silence isn’t imposed, it’s survival.
A teenager, for example, may not know how to explain the tangled web of pain and pressure that shaped their worst decisions. But they know that people prefer simple stories. So they says less, give them what they think they want to hear. And the world calls that progress.
We praise people for being resilient, but what we often mean is: thank you for making us comfortable again.
When someone dies, we tell the grieving to "take all the time they need," as long as that time fits into a long weekend. When someone discloses trauma, we applaud their strength and then pivot to lighter topics, hoping the shadows don’t stick to us. That urge to smooth things over isn’t compassion. It’s fear. We’re terrified that if we sit too long with someone else’s pain, we’ll have to acknowledge our own.
But silence has side effects. It festers.
It turns truth into shame.
It convinces survivors they're broken.
Silence calcifies policy. It warps memory. It tells us that intimacy is only physical, that emotional connection is too messy, too needy, too much. It tells us not to cry at work, not to admit when something haunts us, not to speak unless what we say is palatable.
Silence is harm’s favorite accomplice.
And breaking that silence takes more than courage. It takes a willingness to be misunderstood.
People will weaponize your truth. They’ll say you’re overreacting, that you’re too sensitive, that you should get over it. And still, it matters.
There’s a peculiar kind of liberation in saying the thing no one wants said. It doesn’t fix the past, the present or even the future, but it opens a window. It invites others to exhale. To whisper:
Me too.
I thought I was the only one.
I didn’t have the words until now.
And that’s how silence ends.
Not with a bang.
But with someone speaking out,
even when it's hard,
even when it's scary,
and they don't really know what to say.
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