Quieter

“You look better now” is the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.

Because if they could step inside my chest, they’d hear the thunder still rumbling. The storm didn’t pass. I just stopped opening the window.

I’ve learned to wear quiet like armor. There was a time I used to scream every fracture, broadcast every ache like a public service announcement, hoping maybe someone would understand, or at the very least, notice. But all storms, when heard too often, become background noise to everyone else.

So I went silent.

It wasn’t healing. It wasn’t strength. It was fatigue. Exhaustion from explaining pain to people who only hear discomfort as complaint. Who call silence recovery. Who confuse numb with peace.

I still bleed. I’ve just learned how to hide it better.

Sometimes I feel like a weather station gone offline. Internally, I’m still charting hurricanes, tectonic shifts, full-blown tsunamis of self-doubt and disappointment. But externally? Calm skies. A polite smile. A laugh and smiling chatterbox that tastes like rust and swallowed screams.

I stopped reporting the chaos because no one really knew what to do with the updates. They’d fumble, freeze, look for any argument or worse look away.

So I became a master of stillness.

Just because the winds quieted on the surface doesn’t mean the sea inside me isn’t still wild. I’ve shoved under carpets, wounds I call character. And every day I survive is less about winning and more about enduring. Breathing through broken ribs. Smiling with heavy eyes.

This isn’t strength.

This is survival in its rawest form silent, lonely, and misunderstood.

I’m not better.

I’m just quieter.