They say it’s my fault.
That my mind is broken because I didn’t seek help.
But how do you ask for help when you were taught your voice didn’t matter?
As a child, I learned quickly that silence was safer. My pain was invisible to the people who were supposed to protect me. When I cried, they rolled their eyes. When I was scared, it only made things worse — especially with my mother. She didn’t comfort me; she amplified my fear. It was like she thrived on it. I remember the way her eyes lit up when I screamed in fright — like she was feeding off my terror.
I never asked why.
I learned from a very young age not to question anything.
It was safer that way.
Asking “why” meant inviting more pain. More confusion. More punishment. So I stopped wondering. I stopped hoping things could be different. I did what I had to do: stayed quiet, stayed small, stayed out of the way. That was survival.
And I brought that silence into adulthood.
I kept myself quiet. I didn’t realize that inside me, something was building — the trauma, the fear, the years of swallowing pain. It was slowly becoming something heavier, something darker. My mental health was unraveling, piece by piece, and I didn’t see it until it crashed down on me.
Eventually, it all broke.
I broke. Broke hard.
The years of silence caught up with me like a wave I couldn’t outrun. I fell into a breakdown — not once, but over and over. There were attempts. There was self-harm. There was self-destruction.
I truly believed the world would be better without me in it.
That my existence was more burden than blessing.
That if I disappeared, maybe everything would finally be quiet — not just around me, but inside me.
And now? Now I’m blamed for it.
For my actions. For my pain.
For the result of trying to protect myself as a child by going silent — and then being crushed by the weight of that silence as an adult.
They say it’s my fault my mind is broken.
That I should have asked for help.
But I was never taught how.
I was only taught to be quiet.
And even now, as I try — as I heal, as I fight my way back from the darkness — it’s still not enough.
The system doesn’t see the healing. It only sees the diagnosis.
I am being punished for my mental health.
For the survival mechanisms that kept me alive.
For the pain I never asked for.
I’m not allowed to parent — not because I don’t love, not because I don’t care, but because I have wounds.
Wounds I’m working to close.
Wounds I never gave myself.
I am healing — truly. But in the eyes of the system, healing isn’t enough.
They don’t see the strength it takes to survive what I did.
They only see the scars.
But here’s what they don’t see —
My silence has finally been broken.
For so long, I carried this story in the shadows.
But in the last few days, something shifted.
The weight started to lift, just a little — because I spoke.
I let my truth out into the light.
And with every word, I’m reclaiming a part of myself that was stolen.
This is just the beginning.
And for the first time, I’m not silent anymore.
thegirlspeaks.uk 