Silence is painful.
Silence is safe.
I learned both at the same time.
I was not allowed to have an opinion. Not in a way that held or mattered. What they said stayed said. There was no negotiation. No discussion that didn’t end in correction.
Being good meant being quiet.
Opposing opinions were seen as insubordination. Disrespect. Something to correct. Yelling, anger, more work—whatever matched the moment. It didn’t have to be consistent to be effective. It just had to be enough that I learned.
Over time, I did.
It was safer to stay quiet than risk being wrong.
I learned to measure myself against the room. Not just what I said, but how I existed inside it. How much space I took up. How visible I was allowed to be without consequence. I learned: Silence is safe. Silence is painful. I am small. I am too big. I take up too much space. I don’t speak up enough. Weird is bad. I am weird. I have to be pretty. I am not pretty.
Everything is okay.
Everything is being made okay.
No one calls these rules. No one handed them to me cleanly. They were built from repetition. From correction. From watching what happened to me when I got it wrong.
I learned that I was a product. A tool.
Tools don’t object to being used.
I wasn’t listened to. I was used when listening became necessary. When my voice was needed, it was specific. Functional. Usually when something had already gone wrong. An animal injured. A task incomplete. Not before. Not in a way that prevented anything. Only in response.
When my dad was home, we worked. He was angry most of the time. My mom stayed in her room or yelled at us for not taking care of her. When I wasn’t being corrected, I didn’t exist. There wasn’t a space where I was just a kid. Not without purpose. I was told what I would do, and I did it. Horses. Work. Responsibility that didn’t belong to a child but still landed on one.
I knew what needed doing. I liked knowing. I didn’t like that I had to do it alone.
I was picked up late from school. I waited longer than I should have. My parents were arrested. Someone from the church came to get us hours after school ended. I didn’t think much of it.
I learned to monitor time. To stay ahead of it. To not rely on anyone else to show up when they said they would.
I watch the clock like something will happen if I don’t.
I was labeled things before I understood what they meant. They attached to me and stayed, even the ones that didn’t fit. Words that made silence feel like the safest option available. If everything I said could be used against me, it made more sense to say nothing at all.
Everything kept saying: keep quiet.
Even the things I needed to understand.
I didn’t think about the losses until years later. Not the things I missed. Not the version of myself that never had space to form.
I see the rules more clearly. How they follow me.
How I still measure what I say before I say it.
How I take up less space than I’m allowed to—or too much, and then correct for it.
How I love deeply. Painfully. Completely. And don’t expect the same in return.
The rules still exist.
They just don’t get to make every decision anymore.
I don’t follow them as well as I used to.
