The Things I Don’t Say

    There are so many things I don’t say.

Thoughts that stay tucked behind my teeth. Feelings that I swallow before they even become words. Little truths I carry around quietly because sometimes saying something out loud makes it real in a way I’m not ready for.

I’ve always been fascinated by the things people keep hidden.

The secret wants, private fears, the parts of ourselves we only let exist when the lights are off and no one is watching.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always felt so comfortable in the dark. It doesn’t ask me to explain myself.

It doesn’t ask me to make the ugly things pretty or the complicated things simple. It doesn’t ask me to soften the edges or pretend I don’t feel things as deeply as I do.

The dark just lets things exist. And for a long time, I didn’t. I spent years thinking I was too much. Too intense, too emotional, too curious, too complicated, too dark in some places and too soft in others. I learned to edit myself.

I learned when to quiet down, when to ask for less, when to pretend something didn’t matter as much as it did. I learned how to make myself smaller without anyone ever having to ask me to.

I became very good at deciding which pieces of myself were acceptable to show and which ones were better left behind closed doors. And sometimes I catch myself still doing it. 

I’ll stop myself halfway through a thought because I wonder if it’s too honest. I’ll second-guess something I want to say because I don’t know how it will be received.

It’s strange, the things we learn to do when we’re afraid of being misunderstood. We become experts at hiding. And lately I’m wondering if maybe I had it backwards. Maybe I wasn’t too much. 

Maybe I was just constantly trying to fit myself into places that only had room for pieces of me. 

Maybe there was never anything wrong with the depth of my feelings. Maybe I just kept handing them to people who didn’t know what to do with them. Maybe being complicated isn’t a flaw. Maybe being soft and dark at the same time isn’t a contradiction.

Maybe wanting deeply, feeling deeply, dreaming strangely, loving fiercely, and carrying parts of myself that don’t fit neatly into anyone else’s expectations isn’t something I need to apologize for.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making myself digestible for others.

I don’t want to keep sanding down the edges of myself so everyone else can hold me comfortably.

I want to be honest. Not recklessly, not without boundaries. Not with everyone. But with the people who have earned the privilege of seeing what’s underneath.

Because I think there is a difference between being private and being ashamed. There are things I keep to myself because they’re mine. There are thoughts that belong to the quiet hours. Wants that don’t need an audience. Feelings that don’t need to be explained to anyone just because they exist. 

Some things are special specifically because they’re not shared with everyone. And maybe that’s what I’ve come to understand about myself. I don’t actually want everyone to know everything about me. I just don’t want to feel like I have to hide everything either. There’s a difference. 

Maybe that’s why I created this little corner of the dark. Not because I’m ready to show you everything. I’m not. There will always be pieces of me that belong only to me. Little locked rooms in my mind. Parts of my story that I may carry quietly for the rest of my life.

But maybe I can leave the door cracked open. Just enough. Enough to let you see the shadows. Enough to remind myself that I don’t have to be afraid of every part of me that lives there. Because the things we hide aren’t always the things we should be ashamed of. Sometimes it’s just simply the things we’ve never been brave enough to say.

And maybe safety doesn’t always look like someone promising not to judge you. Sometimes its looks like finally realizing you don’t need their permission to exist as yourself.

So this is me, slowly unlearning the instinct to make myself smaller. Learning that I can be both soft without being fragile, dark without being broken, complicated without being difficult, private without being ashamed, and maybe, just maybe, too much for some people without being too much at all. Because I don’t want someone who only knows how to love the easy parts of me.

I don’t want to spend my life performing a version of myself that is convenient to understand. I want to be able to say the strange thought instead of swallowing it. To admit when something hurts instead of pretending it doesn’t. To laugh too loudly, feel too deeply, to want things, to change my mind, to have boundaries, to have secrets, and to be soft one day and sharp the next.

I want to stop confusing being loved with being palatable.

And I think, in some ways, I am finally learning the difference because of him. 

There is something different about being loved by someone who has chosen every version of you and doesn’t make you feel like you have to brace yourself before showing yourself. Someone who doesn’t look at the complicated parts of you and immediately start searching for ways to make them smaller.

With him, I don’t feel like I have to carefully measure every piece of myself before I hand it over. I can be strange, I can be emotional, I can be quiet when I don’t have the words, and overwhelming when I suddenly have to many of them. I can change my mind, I can say no, I can have boundaries, I can admit when something hurts, I can tell him what I want and don’t want without worrying that either answer will make me less worthy of being loved. And somehow that has become one of the safest things I’ve ever known.

Not because he tells me I’m “allowed” to be myself. But because he makes it feel like I never needed permission in the first place. 

There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from knowing someone could see every strange, messy, complicated corner of you and still look at you with the same tenderness. 

It makes you want to stop hiding. It makes you curious about the parts of yourself that you keep locked away. It makes you wonder what you might become if you stopped spending so much energy trying to be easy to love. 

And I think that’s what safety feels like now. Not never being vulnerable, not never being afraid. But knowing that vulnerability won’t be used against me, knowing that my boundaries won’t make me difficult, knowing that my softness won’t be mistaken for weakness, knowing that I can hand someone the darker, stranger pieces of myself and trust that they will hold onto them carefully.

He doesn’t make my darkness disappear. And maybe that’s why I’ve been able to start saying some of the things I don’t normally say. 

Why I’ve started letting myself be seen instead of constantly trying to control what people see. Because when you’re loved in a way that feels safe, you don’t have to spend all your time wondering whether you’re too much.

You start wondering what it might feel like to finally be enough exactly as you are. And I think I’m still learning that. 

But I’m learning it with someone who makes the lesson feel less frightening. Someone who reminds me, simply by the way he loves me, that I don’t have to become smaller to stay. 

And maybe that’s the most beautiful kind of love there is. The kind that doesn’t ask you to become someone else. The kind that gives you enough safety to finally become more of yourself.