It’s hard to ask for help when your trauma taught you that needing anything makes you a burden. So I don’t. I keep it in. I figure it out. I carry what’s too heavy because somewhere along the way, I learned that asking makes people disappear. Or worse, they stay and resent you for needing too much.

So I do it alone.

I problem-solve through breakdowns. I smile through the ache. I overfunction in the face of exhaustion because I’ve been conditioned to believe that silence is safer than need. That composure earns love. That independence is the only way to be worthy.

And when no one notices what I’ve been carrying, when no one sees how hard it is to hold everything together – I feel invisible. Like all the effort I put into surviving quietly only made me disappear more.

There’s this ache that builds in the silence. This whisper that says, “You’re strong,” but only because no one gave you the option to be anything else. You become the reliable one. The steady one. The one who’s fine even when you’re unraveling. And at some point, people stop asking if you’re okay. They assume you always are.

But underneath all that strength is a person who still aches to be held. Not fixed. Not rescued. Just noticed. Just met in the middle. Just reminded that being human doesn’t make you hard to love.