✶The Quiet War

This is what my freedom sounds like— even though I’m still learning how to live in it.

And it didn’t happen overnight, either. In fact, it came in small trades. At first, it sounded like a little of my laughter for a little of his calm. Then it became a little of my truth for a little less tension in the room.

Back then I didn’t have the words to negotiate— mostly because I was too busy surviving. He called my silence love. But me– I called it exactly what it was: trading my voice for peace.

But we all know that peace built on shrinking is just silence wearing perfume.

At first, I thought survival meant compliance— harmony. So I learned how to make myself smaller than the sound of his voice. I turned apologies into lullabies and mastered how to keep still long enough for the storm to pass. But storms like these— they don’t just pass over you. They're being fed with your stillness— so they memorize that stillness and start to expect it.

But the thing is, your body always knows before your mind does. And my body— it began to refuse things on my behalf:

Sleep fled, appetite vanished, my voice even splintered into whispers. But what I didn’t know back then is that each symptom was a flare— and the flares were all trying to warn me that the system I was in was not safe.

Yet, I kept trying anyway. I tried to rearrange myself into something quieter, something easier, something that wouldn’t set him off. But I could never truly shrink low enough— because the truth is this: If your spirit says no, your body will snitch on you every single time. You see, your body will never betray your soul.

One night, I stopped managing his weather. And in that moment I started listening to my own breath instead.

Was it trembling?

Yes, it was.

But it was mine. And I was listening.

That’s how freedom starts. It’s not necessarily with bravery— it’s when you refuse to allow another lie to be told through your lungs. It literally starts when we refuse to breathe someone else’s falsehood.

He thought he had broken me. It’s funny because he had no idea what was really happening. In reality, he was witnessing me as I broke the pattern.

He couldn’t see that though. He couldn’t see that every crack was an opening— every bruise was a boundary learning its language.

Ultimately, I did not lose myself. I only met the part of me that wouldn’t die for someone else’s comfort.

So when I hear my own breath now— it sounds like truth. And when I get up to walk, the ground doesn’t quiver beneath me. I still carry softness of course, but it’s the kind that knows its own strength.

Listen. I am no longer the quiet before the storm. I’m now the woman who learned that she was the weather all along.

🌙 What the body knows

To the ones who left quietly— you are not weak for surviving softly. You are the evidence that gentleness can end a war. Walk in the peace that doesn’t require your silence.