You're so used to bundling everything up, closing it as tightly as you possibly can with a zip tie, throwing it into a box, and putting that box somewhere so far away and so deep within yourself that you eventually forget it ever existed. You become so accustomed to shoving everything away that when someone suddenly asks you to reopen that box and untangle everything inside it, only then do you realise how terribly you were treated, how much you tolerated, and how much of yourself you had quietly abandoned in the process. That's what dismissal does to you. You tell yourself to "forget it", to "leave it", to "not make such a big deal out of it", when somewhere deep down you know that it did pinch you. Maybe it hurt more than you allowed yourself to admit. But you leave it anyway, because hiding something away is often easier than having to look directly at it.
Perhaps that's what running away does to a person. Instead of fight, you choose flight. You retreat from the confrontation, from the questions, from the anger, from the things you know you should probably say. The adrenaline of escaping carries you far enough that you become numb to everything you were supposed to feel. You convince yourself that you are fine because you are no longer actively hurting. You mistake the absence of immediate pain for healing, when perhaps all you've really done is place the pain somewhere you cannot see it. You keep moving because stopping would mean looking behind you, and looking behind you would mean acknowledging everything you spent so long pretending didn't matter.
And perhaps that is why the box becomes so tightly sealed.
You put disappointment in there. You put betrayal in there. You put every moment someone made you question your worth in there. You put the things you wanted to say but never did, the anger you swallowed because you didn't want an argument, the tears you wiped away because there were more important things to do. You put every little moment that made your chest tighten but which you immediately dismissed with an "it's fine." You don't process any of it. You simply package it away, one feeling after another, until the box becomes so full that you have to push everything down just to close the lid.
Then life becomes busy again. University, assignments, friends, family, responsibilities, conversations, mornings that begin too early and nights that end too late. You learn how to function around the things you've buried. You laugh. You study. You go out. You take pictures. You answer messages. You become remarkably good at appearing alright. Nobody notices the box because you have become very good at carrying it without letting anyone see the weight.
But buried things have a strange way of resurfacing.
Sometimes it happens when everything is finally quiet. You're sitting on a chair listening to the rain outside, staring at nothing in particular, and suddenly something inside you shifts. The knots you tied so tightly begin to loosen. The box you shoved somewhere deep within yourself begins to open on its own, and all those feelings you thought had been washed away start finding their way back to you. Not because you are suddenly weaker, but because you finally have enough silence to hear what you had spent so long trying to drown out.
And that is when you realise just how badly you had been treated.
Not necessarily because someone tells you. Not because you suddenly remember one enormous incident. Sometimes it is the accumulation of everything. The little things you excused. The boundaries you allowed to be crossed. The moments when you made yourself smaller to keep someone else comfortable. The times you convinced yourself that you were asking for too much when all you wanted was basic consideration. You begin to look back and realise that you had sold yourself incredibly cheap, and somehow convinced yourself that it was a bargain.
There is a peculiar kind of violence in constantly convincing yourself that something did not hurt. Not the loud, obvious kind that leaves a bruise, but the quiet kind that teaches you to mistrust your own feelings. You start questioning your reactions before you even allow yourself to have them. Was it really that bad? Am I overreacting? Should I have been more understanding? Was I being too sensitive? Eventually, you become so proficient at minimising your own pain that other people don't even have to dismiss you anymore. You do it for them.
Perhaps that is what happens when someone carries something for far too long. The weight becomes indistinguishable from their body. They no longer notice the strain because they have adapted to it. They learn how to laugh while carrying it, study while carrying it, sit among friends while carrying it, and even convince themselves that the heaviness is simply another part of who they are. The burden becomes so familiar that the possibility of putting it down feels almost unnatural.
And then someone comes along and asks you to vent.
They don't ask for the edited version. They don't want the convenient version where you shrug and say, "I'm okay." They ask what happened. They ask what hurt. They ask what you've been carrying. They offer you a space where you don't have to be composed, where you don't have to make your pain sound reasonable before you're allowed to feel it.
And suddenly, you can't.
You realise that you don't know how to open the box.
You don't know where to begin because there is no neat chronology to pain that has been suppressed for so long. There are only fragments. A sentence someone said. A look you remember. A particular evening. A conversation you never finished. A moment you laughed off even though something inside you broke a little. How do you explain years of swallowing things in a single conversation? How do you untangle something when you've spent so long deliberately tying the knots tighter?
Maybe I was afraid that if I opened that box, I wouldn't know how to close it again.
Maybe I had spent so much time convincing myself that everything was behind me that confronting it would mean admitting it had never truly left. There is a strange comfort in believing that something is buried forever. You don't have to look at it. You don't have to name it. You don't have to decide what to do with it. You can simply continue living above it and pretend the ground beneath you isn't carrying years of things you never faced.
It is easy to mistake silence for strength when you have survived through it for long enough. You begin to believe that speaking about what happened would somehow undo all the progress you made by forgetting it. Perhaps that is why being given permission to speak can feel more frightening than being told to remain silent. Silence has rules you understand. Vulnerability does not.
And maybe that's why I diverted the conversation when someone asked me to let it all out.
I wanted to.
God, I wanted to.
But wanting to speak and knowing how to speak are two entirely different things. I had spent so long running away that when someone finally asked me to stop, I realised I didn't know how. I had become so accustomed to flight that standing still felt terrifying. I had convinced myself that I was over it because I had survived it, without ever asking myself whether survival and healing were actually the same thing.
Sometimes the realisation doesn't arrive dramatically. There is no cinematic breakdown, no sudden revelation. Sometimes it arrives in the middle of an ordinary conversation, when someone treats your pain with a seriousness you never afforded it yourself. They look at something you dismissed and, in their own way, tell you that it must have hurt. And suddenly you are left wondering why someone else had to give your pain permission to exist.
Perhaps I wasn't incapable of speaking. Perhaps I had simply never learned that I was allowed to.
I had mistaken endurance for healing and silence for peace, when in reality I had only become skilled at hiding the evidence. I thought forgetting meant moving forward. I thought not talking about it meant it no longer mattered. I thought being able to function meant I was okay.
Maybe healing will not happen by ripping the box open all at once.
Maybe it will happen slowly.
Maybe one day, one knot will loosen. Then another. Maybe one memory will finally be spoken aloud without the need to immediately minimise it. Maybe one feeling will be allowed to exist without being labelled dramatic or insignificant. Maybe some things will come out slowly, one memory at a time, and perhaps that is alright.
Not every wound has to be explained in one sitting. Not every buried feeling has to be excavated all at once. Sometimes healing begins with something much smaller: admitting that the box exists, admitting that it is heavy, and finally allowing someone to sit beside you while you decide whether you're ready to open it.
Because perhaps the bravest thing isn't finally emptying the box.
Perhaps it is simply admitting that you've been carrying it all this time.
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