When the Room Cannot Fully See
I hold my own truth steady even when an outside room cannot fully see it.
Have you ever tried to describe a kind of harm that leaves no obvious mark? The bruise that is not on your skin. The break that is not in your bones. The years of small erosions that cannot be photographed.
You have probably already had the experience of explaining what happened and watching it not land. Watching a face arrange itself politely while what you said slid past. It is one of the loneliest experiences a person can have. It is also not your failure.
What you lived through was real. The fact that there is no easy language for it in certain rooms does not make it less real. The fact that some people will need years to understand it does not make it less real. The fact that it cannot be summarized in fifteen minutes does not make it less real.
You are allowed to stop performing it. You are allowed to stop straining to be believed. The truth of your life does not require anyone's verdict to remain true. It is true because you were there. It is true because it happened to you. It is true — in your body, in your memory, in the shape your days have taken since. Some kinds of water are deep enough that the eye cannot see them from the surface. The depth is not less real for being unseen.
Today, set down the burden of being understood by everyone. Some will. Some will not. Your task is only to keep knowing what you know.
What was real remains real.