how silence taught me to speak

the words i never said
lived inside me for years.

they sat in my throat like a storm
i didn’t know how to name.

i used to think it was just shyness,
or maybe humility.
but really, it was fear.

fear of not being enough.
fear of being too much.
fear of being seen and still not mattering.

i used to have an inferiority complex—
or maybe i still do.

just quieter now.
i carry it better,
like a secret folded into the way i walk,
the way i speak.

i always knew someone would be better than me—
funnier, smarter, more wanted.

so i told myself
i had to be everything.
not the best at one thing,
but good at everything.

if i knew enough,
if i did enough,
maybe i’d become enough.

i got competitive
not because i crave winning,
but because i can’t stand disappearing.

when you’ve spent so long
feeling like a background character in your own life,
you start performing
like your existence depends on it—
because maybe it does.

i learned to read rooms like textbooks.
learned how to say the right thing,
be the right thing.

i spoke only when i was sure
it wouldn’t cost me anything.

and when i didn’t speak,
i listened.
not just to people,
but to their silences.
i memorized them.

silence became
my teacher,
my mirror,
my wound.

and still,
i never felt ahead.
just… surviving.
just enough.
and even that was a stretch.

no one really ever told me i was enough.
not in a way that sank in.

so i kept searching
for the moment i’d feel like i belonged—
like i didn’t have to keep earning my space.

but that moment never came.
or if it did,
i missed it
trying to impress a world
that was never really watching.

sometimes, late at night,
i wonder what it would be like to just exist.

to not hustle for worth.
to be loved without needing to prove myself first.
to be heard without raising my voice.

these are the things i never said.
not because i didn’t want to—
but because i didn’t know i was allowed to.

and maybe that’s what growing is:
learning that i can speak, even if my voice shakes.
learning that silence was never weakness—
it was just waiting.

and now,
i’m learning how to speak.
not to be loud,
not to be right,
not to be praised—
but just to be real.

and maybe,
that’s enough.