People liked her. She was agreeable. Reliable.
Great in a group photo and even better at conflict avoidance. If someone needed emotional CPR, she’d do it with a smile and a spreadsheet.
People said she had boundaries. What they didn’t know was that she’d just stopped asking for anything.
That version of me could defuse a room in ten words or less.
She knew how to tuck her needs under the rug, flatten every reaction, and leave a conversation looking like it never scratched her.
Clean. Contained. Pleasant.
But pleasant is a trap. It’s how you disappear and get rewarded for it.
There’s no trophy for honesty, just fewer people texting you back.
No one says, “Wow, I love how messy and emotionally transparent you are.”
They say, “You’re so calm,” and hand you their chaos like you’re a storage unit.
I started calling it maturity. It sounded better than what it really was:
detachment dressed in beige.
I wasn’t grounded.
I was muted. A well-framed silence.
People clapped. So I kept clapping for myself, too. That’s what scared me most.
One morning, I caught myself sending a perfectly crafted, measured message that made someone else feel better and made me feel like drywall. I’d deleted the part where I told the truth. Again.
And then I asked a question that stuck: “What if I stop making myself digestible?“
No more airbrushed reactions. No more sentences revised for palatability.
I started noticing how often I reached for words like “it’s okay,” when it wasn’t. Or “I understand,” when I didn’t.
Turns out, I didn’t need better coping strategies. I needed to stop disappearing inside the ones I had.
There’s a version of me that doesn’t overexplain.
She doesn’t rehearse her texts or apologize for crying.
She’s inconvenient and honest and shows up with her feelings still attached.
She’s not palatable. But she’s real.
And that’s the one I’m learning to bring to the party.
So if you like your people agreeable and quiet, you might want to look elsewhere.
I’m not your neat little story arc. I’m the footnote you didn’t see coming.
And I don’t need applause.
I just need not to vanish.
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