This is the last thing that I ever wanted to do. I write one to maybe two blog posts a year and it seems to take everything that I’ve got to make it happen. It’s one of those things that I make jokes about now, especially with my husband. I am not a writer. I just talk a lot. I have falsely claimed to be something that I am not for years. It’s something that I have actively avoided. I can’t sleep at night and still the writing doesn’t happen. I’m on my phone scrolling for hours on end, planning for a life that I am never currently “present” in, as if that will somehow make it easier to cope with the fact that my dad is dead now. As if filling the house we are about to move into next month, with just the right amount of furniture and just the right extravagant luxuries to prove to myself that I have something to look forward to, is enough to keep me from boiling over and burning everything and everyone in my path. I am fully aware that it is selfish for me to say these things in the middle of what others, who are also suffering, are going through right now, but I have no censorship lately. I feel too much and I can’t hold it in and no one is safe from the crossfire. These days, it is hard to live in my skin. I look at myself in the mirror and I’m never sure what exactly I’m looking at anymore. I’m a mom. I’m a wife. I’m a daughter. I’m a friend and I don’t even know what any of it means. Most days, I feel like I was cast for a series of roles that I wanted, more than anything, but I couldn’t deliver on any of them. I never wanted this. I didn’t want to feel like a person that people could whisper about. To me they say, “I don’t know how you do it.” “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” “You are so strong.” I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to scream, but instead I just thank them. I thank them for the compliment that doesn’t match up to who I really am. 

I think back to when I lived in Rome for one college semester. I had five roommates who were all present at the time, in a small L shaped apartment, when I accidentally almost blinded myself with a disinfecting eye solution for contact lenses. There was a specific container the contacts had to go into with a solution made up of hydrogen peroxide for about six hours before it neutralized and I could safely place them back on. I didn’t read the fine print. I used a random contact case and that morning when I went to go put them back in, they latched and burned into my eyes so intensely that I could feel the pain reaching to the back of my skull. The one and only bathroom with a sink was down the hall and around the corner. Everyone else was still in their bedrooms at the time or in the kitchen and I never made a sound as I ran into almost every wall including a drying rack that was placed just outside of the bathroom door. I scratched desperately and as carefully as I could to remove them from my eyes. I flushed them under water for what seemed like an hour and they were so swollen that I inevitably had to share the story over and over again with anyone that I ran into for several days after. 

 I didn’t scream. I didn’t say anything. It was one of the most physically painful things that I have ever experienced (before childbirth) and I silenced myself. I deprived myself the opportunity of being human. I kept quiet and for whose benefit I will never know. I would like to tell you that this was a one-time occurrence, but it wasn’t. It’s been something that has been ongoing in my life for so long that it’s become second nature for me to suffer alone in silence. I’m wise enough to know that this is not the right way to process things or move on. It’s not a good habit to have because how can you be helped if no one hears you. How do you tell the world you live in that looks at you with compassion and admiration, that you don’t know how you’re doing it, you just know that you aren’t, that you don’t need their imagination because you just need their time? How do you explain that your biggest strength is also your biggest heartbreak? Because you’re not strong. You’re just quiet.