Reclaiming My Voice After a Childhood of Secrets

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Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

The bedroom was still, the kind of stillness that presses into your ears and makes you wonder if the world outside is still moving at all. The clock on the nightstand ticked rhythmically, each second louder than it should have been, like time itself was trying to remind me I was still here. I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the neatly folded comforter, untouched since morning. The light through the curtains was soft and muted, as if the sun had learned to whisper.

Outside, someone laughed, loud and unburdened, the kind of sound that reminded me just how far joy had drifted. Somewhere, a car passed, its engine humming like a memory too far away to name. But in here, silence was everything. This silence was not the peaceful kind that soothes. It was the weighty kind. The kind that settles into your bones and makes you forget what it feels like to be heard.

For years, I thought silence was safety. I thought if I said nothing, nothing worse could happen. I believed that by remaining small, invisible, and unremarkable, I could avoid the thing I feared most: the accusation of lying. Again.

That's what I learned early on. Not only did I learn to be quiet, but I also learned to doubt myself. I challenged my recollections. I found myself questioning my memory and voice. Every time I tried to speak a truth that didn’t suit someone else’s story, the facts slipped, the blame shifted, and I was left holding a version of events that no one else seemed to remember.

The silence became familiar, like a second skin. At first, it felt like armor, smooth and safe. But over time it hardened. It closed around me. It transformed into a cocoon from which I could not break free. And worst of all, it taught me a language I would spend most of my life trying to unlearn.

The secrets didn’t have names. They didn’t shout. They just lingered. The air felt heavy with their presence, pressing against my ribs. The sensation clung like smoke, long after the fire had gone out.

I grew up in that kind of quiet. The quiet was not soft or serene but charged. Every glance, every pause, was a signal. A warning. In that kind of silence, even the smallest sound can feel like betrayal. And sometimes, the absence of sound becomes its own kind of violence.

When my father told me, "You're damaged goods," he said it the way someone might comment on the weather. Flat, unbothered, already moving on. Just three words. Not a scream. Not even a secret. But they landed like they had been waiting for years to arrive.

And they didn’t fall alone. They landed in a room already full of echoes. A life already full of silence. A childhood stitched together with accusations of lying and reminders that my truth didn’t belong to me. No one would ever believe me.

That’s what makes a sentence like that stick. It is not just the words themselves that hold significance, but also the silence that envelops them. The years of saying nothing. The space where someone should have said, “That’s not true.” and didn’t.

Silence isn’t empty. It is weight. It is heat. It is pressure. It builds. And when it finally breaks, it doesn’t just crack. It shatters.

I was alone in my car, gripping the steering wheel tightly, feeling as though I might float away if I let go. The words came slow and uncertain, but they cracked the air like a breath I had been holding for years. My voice was soft, rasping, and unfamiliar, like it had been sleeping somewhere deep and had only just remembered how to rise.

But it was real. And it was mine.

Since then, my voice has come in pieces. In late-night pages inked in the dark. In quiet conversations over coffee. Even in rooms where no one knows my story, they still choose to listen to me. I am not always loud. I am not always steady. But I speak.

And each time I do, the silence steps back. Not all at once. But a little more. Each time.

Because here is what I know now:

I am not a liar.
I am not damaged goods.
I am not the quiet I was given.
I am not the lies they told about me.
I am the sound I am choosing to make.

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