Why I No Longer Explain My Pain

Once, I believed pain required a reason.

That if I could name it, map it, weave it into a story, the world might soften around its edges. That others would understand. That maybe I would, too.

But pain is not a thesis. It is not a tale.

It is a country you live in, even when no one visits.

I used to speak my grief—softly, cautiously, with evidence.

I wanted people to see I had earned it. That I was not being dramatic. That my sorrow was valid.

But all that explaining never made the ache smaller.

It only made me disappear inside my own justifications.

There is a silence that comes when you have said too much.

Not the kind that wounds.

The kind that shields.

I no longer explain my pain.

I do not dress it for company.

I do not translate it into language that makes other people comfortable.

I do not preface it with stories about how strong I usually am.

I let it live in my body, without apology.

I let it rest beside me—on the ground, under trees, without a podium.

Because pain does not need to be understood to be sacred.

And not all healing happens where others can see it.

Some of it is simply learning to breathe in a room

where no one claps for your survival.