Some Wounds Don’t Scar — They Stay Open Quietly

I used to believe that time healed everything. That with enough months between you and the pain, it eventually faded into something softer — something manageable. But I’ve come to realize that some wounds don’t scar. They don’t close. They stay open quietly, hidden under layers of laughter, busyness, and pretending.

My name is Liana, and this is the story of the wound I carry — the one no one sees, the one I don’t talk about anymore. But just because I don’t speak of it doesn’t mean it stopped hurting.

It started seven years ago, on an otherwise ordinary April afternoon. I got a call no one ever wants: “There’s been an accident. You need to come quickly.”

The next few hours moved in a blur. I remember screaming before my body even understood the words. My brother, Sam — the one who always knew how to make me laugh when the world felt like it was falling apart — had been hit by a drunk driver while walking home from work.

He was twenty-four. I was twenty-one.

They told me he died instantly. That it was painless. But I wasn’t thinking about his pain. I was thinking about mine. About the gaping hole suddenly ripped into the middle of my life.

What I didn’t know then was that the moment he died, part of me did too. And it wasn’t the dramatic kind of death — not the kind people notice. It was the silent kind. The kind that walks around, goes to work, smiles in family photos, but never really feels whole again.

For months after his death, I barely slept. I saw him in dreams, heard him in songs, looked for him in crowds. My phone still had his texts. I couldn’t delete them. I didn’t want to.

People were kind, at first. They brought casseroles, sent flowers, left voice mails that said, “If you need anything, I’m here.” But grief is inconvenient, and eventually people drifted. Life went on for them.

It didn’t for me.

I became good at pretending. At work, I smiled and nodded through meetings. With friends, I laughed at the right times, responded to texts with emojis, and said, “I’m fine” even when I felt like I was drowning. No one knew that I cried in the shower so no one would hear. That sometimes I screamed into pillows until my throat went raw.

Grief has no timeline, but society gives you one. You get three months of sympathy, maybe six if you're lucky. After that, it’s “aren’t you over it by now?”

But I wasn't.

The thing about losing someone like Sam is that the pain doesn't fade — it just changes shape. At first, it’s sharp and suffocating. Later, it’s quieter, duller — but always there, humming under the surface.

It’s there when I see brothers laughing in coffee shops.

It’s there when someone says, “I’m so close to my sibling — I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

It’s there on his birthday, when I buy a cupcake and light a candle anyway.

People say I’ve handled it well. That I’m strong. But strength, I’ve learned, isn’t about being okay. It’s about carrying the ache and still showing up.

There’s something lonely about grieving someone who the world forgets. About still crying years later, but doing it in silence because the world has moved on.

I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell Sam that he was the best part of my childhood. That he protected me in ways I didn’t even realize until after he was gone. That his goofy jokes, terrible dance moves, and ridiculous love of pineapple pizza were things I would one day miss so deeply, it would feel like physical pain.

You don't get closure with sudden death. You get a question mark.

And for a long time, I hated myself for not "healing" properly. For not letting go. But here's what I’ve learned: healing doesn’t always mean the wound closes. Sometimes healing is just learning how to live around it.

Some wounds don’t scar.

They stay open quietly — unseen, unspoken, but felt in every part of who you are.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because in that quiet ache, I remember. I remember the sound of Sam's laugh. The way he called me “kiddo” even though we were barely three years apart. The way he looked out for me when no one else did.

Grief, I’ve come to understand, is just love with nowhere to go.

So I carry him in the silence. In the way I try to be kind. In the way I notice people who seem a little too quiet. In the way I never, ever let someone feel invisible in their pain.

This wound might never scar — but it has made me more human.

And maybe that’s the most honest healing of all.


Thank you for reading ❤️.