the performance of my life

the version of me you will never know, wrapped in the delicate armour of a quiet heart

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Act I: the performance

i’ve spent most of my life performing. not on a stage, but in rooms that demanded a version of me that was easier to love. the kind of love that required shrinking to fit. i learned early how to read a scene, adjust my tone, shift my posture, rehearse the lines that kept the peace. smiled when expected. stayed quiet when it mattered most. feelings were made smaller so no one else had to feel uncomfortable. it wasn’t theatre. it was survival. this was the role i knew best: the agreeable one, the one who never needed too much, the one who never broke the fourth wall.

they say i’m cold. but they’ve never held a fire without burning it. they say i’m distant. but they never ask what i’m protecting. they call me selfish, but never stay long enough to see the cost. soft accusations passed off as concern, dropped into conversation like harmless observations but delivered with sharp edges. they say i don’t call enough, don’t show that i care. they say i’ve changed. but when i do call, no one really listens. the only one who stays on the line is my mother. and even she says i’m too quiet, as if love only counts when it’s loud.

but these things aren’t true. not really.

there’s too much feeling inside me. not loud, not visible, more like an ocean behind glass. films make me cry. pain in someone i love feels like an ache in my own body. quiet moments carry weight, like stones i can’t put down. this care burns. a low, steady fire no one sees. but i’ve learned not to show it. because when i was young, the world taught me vulnerability is spectacle. that softness invites laughter. that feeling openly meant placing yourself in someone else’s hands, never knowing if they’d hold or harm.

when i cried, the room echoed with laughter, not comfort. my sadness didn’t stain the carpet. it turned into entertainment. i would sit in the next room, trying to hold my breath steady while their laughter echoed down the hallway. my mom and my aunt, chuckling about how i cried over nothing, how i overreacted, how i needed to toughen up. this is how children learn not to trust themselves. in that moment, something inside began to freeze. not all at once, but slowly, like a lake hardening under a pale winter sun.

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Act II: the fracture

this is what psychologists call emotional inhibition. it happens quietly. a child learns, not through explanation but experience, that expressing emotion is a kind of risk. that softness invites sharpness. that crying will be met not with comfort, but with jokes. and so, the body learns. the nervous system takes notes. it rewires. emotions are packed into tight boxes and stored behind the ribs. over time, silence became its own fluent tongue. not a mark of apathy but a quiet language of survival, spoken only when the cost of expression outweighed the relief of release.

a child actor in her own home. no costume. no makeup. only practiced restraint. studying the emotional temperature of every room like it held exam questions. editing mid-sentence. rehearsing every version that wouldn’t be met with ridicule. sadness rewritten into silence. anger tucked beneath politeness. joy, dimmed to a glow just faint enough not to threaten anyone else’s light. not from lack of feeling but from lack of safety.

and so i stopped. stopped crying where anyone could see. stopped bringing up the things that knotted my chest. scanned a room before speaking. read the weather in someone’s tone before offering my own. kept the softest parts tucked away where they couldn’t be mishandled. they called it growing up. i called it self-defence.

when i was sixteen i watched a movie called okja. the ending wrecked me. not just the animal but the cruelty, the helplessness. i sobbed on the couch. my mom watched me like i was absurd. later, she told everyone. turned my heartbreak into a story for laughs. in that moment, i decided: never again. never again would i give her that part of me. not because the feeling stopped, but because i realised some people don’t know how to hold delicate things without breaking them.

these are micro-wounds. the kind that don’t bleed but linger. in psychology, this kind of repeated invalidation is a form of emotional neglect. not marked by absence, but by misattunement. the caregiver is physically present but emotionally unreachable. the child senses the gap and begins to self-protect by withdrawing. closeness starts to feel like a setup, distance like control.

they say i’m emotionless, but they’re reading the wrong language. the feelings are still here, folded into corners, pressed into quiet gestures. my face stays calm when it’s splintering. my sounds fine, even when full of thunder. logic speaks when the scream threatens. not from a lack of feeling, but because the cost of showing it is too high. it’s internalised emotional invalidation. children told they’re too much or too dramatic don’t stop feeling. they learn their feelings can’t be trusted. it becomes muscle memory. silence doesn’t mean emptiness. it means protection.

for three years, i was pescatarian. every day, mocked. dramatic. silly. picky. told to eat meat like everyone else. i defended my choices quietly. five years later, my mom said it made sense. said it was healthy. might try it too. and i wanted to scream. not because she changed her mind, but because mine was never taken seriously until it became hers. it’s strange to grow up in a house where your convictions are treated as laughable until someone else decides they’re legitimate.

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Act III: the reclamation

a few weeks ago, a therapist looked at me like she saw through the glass. “you’re a deeply caring person,” she said, gently, like handing me something fragile. and i believed her. people like me, she said, often develop emotional suppression as a survival strategy. we aren’t cold. we’re careful. not distant. just attuned to threat. we feel more than anyone realises. we just learned early that showing it meant harm.

i told my mom what the therapist said. i told her i hide my feelings because of how they were received when i was younger. she got defensive. said i was raised well. said she never did anything to make me feel that way. and i didn’t know how to explain that wounds don’t need to be catastrophic to be permanent. that silence was safer than trying to prove i was hurt.

i stopped offering warmth to people who only recognised it when it came wrapped in their own language. stopped performing closeness to meet expectations shaped by someone else’s comfort. i still care. just not in ways that ask me to erase myself.

there’s a concept in trauma psychology called adaptive defence. the mind shapes itself around danger, builds patterns to keep you safe. physical or emotional. it doesn’t matter. if laughter followed every heartbreak, the nervous system remembers. openness starts to feel like exposure. so you close. not out of spite, but out of necessity.

the truth is, i love deeply. but love has become sacred. private. a flame cupped between my palms, flickering in the draft of every careless word, burning me more than it ever warmed them. i offer it carefully now, too costly to give to those who only see it when it looks like them. care lives in the small things: the way i listen, keep secrets, stay quiet when i could speak cruel truths. the ache is constant.

what you see as cold was always just a cover. what you call distant was always a defence. if you think i’m selfish, you’ve mistaken silence for absence. you didn’t see the way i softened so others wouldn’t break. the truths i swallowed. the grief i carried alone. they say i’m cold, but they never sat beside me when sorrow burned beneath my skin. they say i’m distant, but never asked why closeness felt like exposure.

i don’t need your version of me to be right. i don’t need to fight for a seat at a table i’ve always belonged to. if you cannot recognise what lives inside me, if you don’t see the care threaded through everything i do, that’s on you. i know who i am. and i won’t keep performing just to be palatable.

emotional inhibition is not emptiness. it is adaptation. when you grow up in a space where your feelings are laughed at, where your sadness becomes someone else’s story to tell, you don’t stop feeling. you just start hiding.

they only recognise warmth in the language they were taught. but i speak in quieter ways. care that isn’t loud, but lasting. my feelings aren’t performed anymore. they’re mine now. held close. sacred. and if they can’t see that, it’s not my job to teach them how. i’m done handing my heart to people who treat it like rubber. in the quiet, at least, i don’t owe anyone an explanation.

this was the performance of my life. the script was memorised. every mark hit. smiles on cue. voice softened. ache dimmed. maybe i’m still on stage. maybe the curtains never closed. but i’m not acting for them anymore. i’m acting to stay safe. to stay whole.

and if they don’t understand the script, that’s no longer my concern.

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