Things I Never Said Out Loud

I never said

how the silence after using

was louder than any siren.

Or how the high

was never high enough

to touch the part of me

that wanted to disappear.

I never said

that I watched you sleep,

counting my lies like ceiling cracks,

each one a prayer you’d never catch me

in the wreck I kept behind my teeth.

I never told my mom

that I didn’t think I’d make it past 32.

Or that when I called her “just to talk,”

I was really asking her voice

to keep me alive one more night.

There were days I swallowed shame like pills

dry-throated, desperate—

and still smiled.

Because what else could I do

but pretend I wasn’t drowning

in the bathtub

with my own blood

on the corner of the mirror?

People like me

aren’t supposed to get out.

We’re supposed to die

in some poetic, tragic way

so they can say

“he was brilliant but broken.”

Tie a ribbon around the wreckage

and call it closure.

But here’s the truth—

I’ve been clean for a year.

No fanfare.

No applause.

Just me,

breathing through it.

Choosing the good thing

before the easy thing,

again and again,

even when no one is watching.

And still—

sometimes I wonder

if they see me

or just the version

they were ready to grieve.

But I’m not asking anymore.

I don’t need their permission

to live.

I don’t need their comfort

to be proud.

I don’t need their absolution

to be happy.

I found myself.

I found work that makes me rise in the morning

instead of spiral at 3 a.m.

I call my mom, and it’s not a lifeline—

just love.

I walk past mirrors

and don’t flinch.

That might be

the biggest miracle of all.

This is who I am now.

Not who I was.

Not who they feared I’d be.

But who I decided to become

with nothing but resilience and hope.

And maybe I never said all this—

until now.

But god,

it feels good

to finally speak.