I regret how many years I spent translating my own pain into softer language for everyone else’s comfort

Dear Delyara, I was excellent at it. Just stress. Just a phase. Just work. Just marriage. Just motherhood. Just life. Nothing dramatic. Not worth making a thing of. Those phrases bought everyone around me comfort and cost me clarity. Because every time I reduced my own pain to something easier to hear, I also reduced the likelihood that anything around me would truly change. I made myself digestible. Reasonable. Manageable. Mature. Meanwhile my body was carrying the full-size truth all along. That is what I regret now. Not only what happened. How often I helped it remain possible by naming it too gently to interrupt. I don’t think I betrayed myself on purpose. I do think I betrayed myself. That is harder to forgive than almost anything else.