I Regret How Many Years I Called My Own Pain “Not That Bad” Just to Keep the Room Comfortable

Dear Delyara, I used it with everything. Work. Marriage. Health. Money. Tiredness. Loneliness. Not that bad. Could be worse. Just a rough patch. Just a lot going on. Just life. Every time I softened the truth, I protected the room and abandoned myself a little. I made other people more comfortable and made actual change less likely. I turned my own body’s distress into digestible language for people who were never going to volunteer for harder truths unless I forced them to hear them. I regret that. Not because I think I should have been louder in some performative way. Because I think I should have been more loyal to my own experience. I should have trusted it sooner. I should have given it cleaner language. Instead, I made suffering manageable. And that helped suffering stay.