The day’s end, another moment to reflect.
Dear Diary,
Yesterday, I wrote about the little victories. And they were real — small triumphs I held in my hands like fireflies, hoping they would glow long enough to guide me through the dark.
But today was heavy.
Not in a catastrophic way. No breaking news. No major failure. Just the quiet weight of being stretched too thin, of carrying too much while pretending it isn’t breaking me. It’s the sort of day that doesn’t look like struggle from the outside. The kind you push through on autopilot, managing deadlines, reacting to changes, nodding along in meetings while your brain scrambles to catch up.
I don’t think people realize what it takes to look calm when everything around you is shifting. I’ve gotten good at it — maybe too good. And somewhere in that performance, I stopped saying how I really felt. I started telling myself that my silence was strength. That speaking up would make things worse, or draw attention I didn’t want. That other people had it worse, so I should just keep going.
But there are things I never said.
To coworkers. To friends. To people I loved.
And maybe most of all, to myself.
Things like: I need help. Or this hurts. Or I’m scared I’ll disappoint you.
Psychologist James Pennebaker’s work on expressive writing found that people who put words to their unspoken feelings show improvements in both mental and physical health (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). But unspoken emotion doesn’t just disappear. It gets stored. In tight shoulders. In clenched jaws. In the aching quiet of a night where you lie awake rehearsing all the things you wanted to say but didn’t.
Some of my silence comes from learned patterns. In childhood, being quiet kept things peaceful. At work, silence keeps things professional. In friendships, it keeps things light. But the cost is cumulative. You can only swallow so many feelings before your body starts to feel full of ghosts.
And sometimes, you lose track of what you never said until the moment passes. Until it’s too late. Until someone walks away and all you’re left with is the echo of your own restraint.
Studies on emotional labor, especially in service and corporate environments, show that constantly regulating outward expressions for the sake of professionalism leads to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (Grandey, 2000). That resonates deeply. Because I can put on the face. I can write the email, make the plan, rally the team. But beneath the surface? Some days I feel hollow.
What makes this harder is the awareness that others often don’t notice.
I notice everything. The tension in a voice. The meaning behind a pause. I read people like books I’ve memorized. But I forget to read myself. I minimize my stress until it bleeds into my sleep. I deny my resentment until it erupts in irritation. I convince myself it’s not that bad until I’m in tears over nothing.
There’s a theory called self-silencing, often discussed in feminist psychology, which suggests that people (especially those socialized as female) suppress self-expression to maintain harmony in relationships (Jack & Dill, 1992). Whether it’s gendered or personal, I see the echo of that in myself. I’ve made quiet my comfort zone. My security system. My survival strategy.
But I want to believe there’s a gentler way to exist. One that doesn’t require me to choose between composure and honesty. One where saying I’m not okay doesn’t mean I’m weak or ungrateful.
Tonight, I’m saying it here.
Not to undo the silence of a lifetime.
Just to interrupt it.
Yours in letters, always,
Pandora
P.S. If you’re carrying words you never said, I hope you find a place to put them down. You can start here, if you want.
References:
- Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274.
- Grandey, A. A. (2000). Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 95.
- Jack, D. C., & Dill, D. (1992). The Silencing the Self Scale: Schemas of intimacy associated with depression in women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 16(1), 97-106.
Title inspired by the song “Say Something” by A Great Big World. All rights to the music and lyrics belong to the original creators.