Page 21 Chapter 3

Lost in the Silence: When the Words Won’t Come

For weeks now, I’ve been drowning in a silence that isn’t mine. A silence that isn’t peaceful, isn’t chosen, but forced upon me by the weight of everything I haven’t said, everything I haven’t been able to write. It started around my birthday—a day I had sworn would be different, a day I had promised myself I would celebrate. And I did, it was spiritual, karmic and universally orchestrated. But since then, life has done what it does best: it’s thrown punches when I wasn’t looking, and I’ve been catching them with my ribs, my heart, my soul.

I have been sick, run down in every possible way. March Break came and went, but instead of feeling like a pause, a moment to breathe, it only reminded me of how much weight I carry. Car problems, financial struggles, the kind of stress that burrows deep into your bones and keeps you up at night. I have been stretched so thin that I swear I can feel myself cracking at the edges.

And then, there was the loss I never saw coming. My best friend—gone, just like that. A misunderstanding, a moment, a mistake maybe, but I never got to know because sge didn’t give me the chance. One day she was there, and the next, I was blocked from her world, erased without warning, without explanation. No conversation, no closure. Just absence. And it cut deeper than I can put into words. Because I would have fought for her. I would have explained, apologized, done whatever it took to fix it—if only I had been given the chance. But I wasn’t.

That wound alone was enough to send me reeling, but life doesn’t believe in spacing out the hits. People I love, people who claim to love me, have triggered me in ways I didn’t see coming. Anger, threats, words that should never be spoken to someone you care about. Words that don’t just hurt—they linger. They make a home in my chest, whispering to me when I'm alone, reminding me that maybe, just maybe, I'm not as safe in their love as I thought I was.

So I’ve done what I always do. I’ve gone quiet. I’ve withdrawn. I’ve locked it all up inside because I refuse to be a burden, because needing help feels like weakness, because the idea of someone seeing me struggle and deciding I’m too much is another wound I cannot afford. I know it’s unhealthy. I know isolation isn’t the answer. But when the world feels unsafe, when people feel unsafe, what else is there to do?

I went from feeling on top of the world to barely holding myself together. From feeling strong, untouchable even, to being afraid to breathe wrong, to being afraid that if I let my guard down even a little, I’ll break completely. I feel like I’m spiraling, slipping backward into a version of myself I fought so damn hard to leave behind. And the worst part? I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to make sense of it.

The words won’t come because my mind is too full of everything I can’t say out loud. But writing has always been my way through the darkness, my way of making sense of the mess. Maybe this—this raw, unpolished, heavy truth—is the first step back. Maybe this is me clawing my way out, one word at a time.

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