There has been a knot sitting in my chest for what feels like forever. It coils tightly, sometimes so sharp I feel it in my stomach, sometimes so quiet I almost mistake it for calm—until I realize it has never really left.
I wish I could explain it neatly. I wish there were a single cause, a single event, a single reason to point to. But this is not that kind of story. It is not dramatic, not headline-worthy, not something that makes sense even to me. It is simply a quiet ache that moves with me, slipping into every space I enter, humming beneath every conversation, pressing against me even in stillness.
People ask if I’m okay, and I nod, smile, say yes. Not because I am fine, but because I cannot find words that could hold this heaviness. How do you explain the shape of a storm when only you feel the rain? How do you confess that the silence inside you is louder than the world outside?
For so long, I tried to live as the bubbly one—the person who could brighten the room, who others expected to always be the light. And perhaps, in some ways, I believed that was who I was meant to be. But I am tired. I am tired of holding up that version of myself, of being the one who has to sparkle endlessly. And when I finally broke, when I needed space and could no longer carry that role, I felt quietly tossed aside. The same friends who once sought my brightness seemed to fade when mine began to dim. That disappointment lingers more deeply than I can admit out loud.
Sometimes I think I am strong for carrying it, for getting up each day, for walking through the fog even when it feels endless. Other times, I wonder if I am breaking in ways too small for anyone to notice.
What I know is this: I do not want pity. I do not want to cast blame. I do not want to play the role of a victim in a story that no one asked me to write. I only want to speak—to name this silence, to give shape to this ache—so that it does not consume me in its unspoken form.
Maybe this is what survival looks like: one breath at a time, one small act of carrying on, one fragile hope that someday the knot will loosen, the storm will quiet, and the ground beneath me will feel steady again.
Until then, I live inside the silence, whispering to myself that even this—especially this—will pass.
And when it feels like no one else can carry me, I remind myself that Allah is always nearer than my own veins. Perhaps this ache is not the end, but the beginning of learning how to lean fully on Him :)
