Lingering voices
Everyday, I try to make a promise to myself: I did not want to cry in front of my family anymore.
I wanted them to see that I was okay. I wanted to go back to living my days without making the people who love me worry about me. I thought that after such a long journey of accepting everything, after repeatedly learning to forgive myself, the tears would slowly come to an end.
More than two months have passed since that journey.
And yet, I haven’t.
Even now, there are moments when I find myself crying over things I thought I had already learned to accept.
There are days when I feel as though I have come so far. I can work, talk about many things, make plans for the future, and go through life as usual.
Then, without warning, certain words return to my mind.
“I was the one chasing.”
“I was the one forcing things to happen.”
“Thank you for your time and everything you spent.”
“Don’t forget to treatment.”
Those last two sentences made me stop and think,
Oh… so this whole time, that was all that was remembered.
Not the sincerity. Not the presence. Not the countless things that could never be measured in time, money, or appearance.
Just that.
And maybe that is why those words stayed.
Because sometimes what hurts is not only what someone says, but also the realization of everything they do not say.
Words that may have taken only a few seconds to say can somehow remain in someone’s mind for such a long time.
I have come to understand that what hurts is not only what happened, but also the way I began to see myself after hearing those words.
I questioned my own memories.
I questioned my feelings.
I wondered whether I had been overreacting. Whether I was the one at fault. Whether I even had the right to feel hurt.
Even when my reaction to everything once brought me to a point where I no longer wanted to live, what I received instead was anger and fear.
Since then, even speaking about the things that traumatized me has felt frightening.
There is always this fear that if I tell my story, somehow I will end up being the one blamed again.
So I learned to be silent.
Not because I had nothing to say.
Not because I did not have my own version of what happened.
I simply no longer had the energy to keep defending my own feelings.
Strangely, even when I chose silence and made no attempt to defend myself, I could still somehow become the one at fault.
There are still things done by the same person that can bring me to tears. Not only because of what happened in the past, but because even after everything, I can still see how the blame somehow finds its way back to me.
My silence can be interpreted however someone chooses.
And choosing not to explain myself does not necessarily stop others from drawing their own conclusions about me.
Meanwhile, I am still living with the words that were left behind, the fear that appears without warning, and tears whose origins I sometimes cannot even explain.
There is something strange about realizing that an event can be over for one person while continuing to live inside another.
Yet, in the middle of all this, there is something else I still do not fully understand:
how to respond to people who have been incredibly kind to me.
The people who ask if I am okay.
The people who worry about me.
The people who make sure I am not alone.
The people who may not know what to do, but still care enough to ask.
Even now, I often do not know how to respond to them.
I still choose silence and distance sometimes because I am still learning how to receive the kindness they offer.
Not because I do not appreciate it.
Perhaps it is precisely because I appreciate it so deeply that I do not know what to do with it.
I feel guilty when I see someone worrying about me. Part of me wants to recover as quickly as possible so that they no longer have to think about how I am doing.
There is a part of me that wants to say, “I’m okay, really,” even though I know that on some days, those words are not entirely true.
Perhaps after going through something that makes us question ourselves, receiving kindness is something we have to learn all over again.
Learning that some people ask questions not because they want to judge us.
Some people listen without trying to decide who is right or wrong.
Some people stay without wanting anything in return.
And some people worry about us simply because they want us to still be here.
I am still learning to understand that.
Just as I am still learning that acceptance is never as simple as saying, “I have forgiven.”
Forgiveness does not automatically erase memories.
Acceptance does not make the mind and body suddenly forget.
And healing, apparently, does not always mean never crying again.
Sometimes I feel disappointed in myself because of it.
Didn’t I make a promise?
Haven’t I already come so far?
Shouldn’t I be stronger by now?
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But perhaps I have spent too much time measuring healing by how rarely I cry.
Maybe the question is no longer, “Why am I still crying?”
Maybe the question should be:
“What is the part of me that is still hurting trying to tell me?”
I am beginning to understand just how powerful words can be.
Someone may have already left our lives. The conversation may have ended long ago. Countless days may have passed.
And yet, their voice can remain inside our heads.
That realization led me to another question — one that is equally unsettling:
What if I, too, have become a lingering voice in someone else’s mind?
What if there were words I said casually that someone carried home with them and thought about for days?
What if something I have completely forgotten is still remembered by someone else?
What if, without realizing it, I once made someone question themselves because of something I said?
I don’t know.
Maybe I have.
And considering that possibility has made me see my own pain a little differently.
Not to diminish what I feel.
Not to justify the words that once hurt me.
But this experience has taught me that we may never truly know how long a sentence will remain in someone else’s heart.
What feels like a few minutes of conversation to us may become something another person remembers for years.
What we consider a harmless joke may return to someone when they are alone.
Words we say in anger may be forgotten by us the next morning, while the person who heard them may still be trying to make peace with them long afterward.
Perhaps one thing I want to carry with me from all of this is the desire to become more careful with my own words.
I do not want the fact that I have been hurt to convince me that I could never hurt someone else.
I am human too.
I can say the wrong thing.
I can be insensitive.
I can speak without fully understanding what the person listening to me is going through.
And if any of my words have ever become a “lingering voice” for someone else, I hope that one day I will be brave enough to listen.
Not to immediately explain what I meant, but to acknowledge that my intentions when saying something do not always determine how those words are experienced by someone else.
Perhaps this is one of the things pain is teaching me:
not only to hope that others will be careful with my feelings, but also to learn to be more careful with theirs.
Still, one of the hardest parts of all this is learning to distinguish their voices from my own.
When my mind tells me that I was forcing things to happen, is that really my own conclusion?
When I feel guilty for having fallen apart so badly, is that guilt truly mine?
When I am afraid to talk about what hurt me, is it because I do not have the right to speak about it — or because I have learned to fear that speaking will only lead to being blamed again?
And when I choose silence, does that mean I agree with everything that has been said about me?
I don’t think so.
Maybe my silence is not an admission.
Maybe my silence is simply the way I am trying to preserve what little energy I have left for myself.
I do not have to explain everything to everyone.
I do not have to make everyone understand my side of the story.
And I do not have to keep proving that something truly hurt me for that pain to be real.
I still do not have all the answers.
What I do know is that today, I am still on a journey to reclaim my own voice.
Little by little, I want to learn that what other people say about me does not have to become the way I define myself.
I want to learn to listen to myself without immediately judging what I hear.
I want to be able to remember the past without becoming the version of myself who was still trapped inside it.
I also want to learn how to receive the good people who remain around me without feeling that I need to become okay immediately for their sake.
Maybe one day I will be able to answer their concern more honestly:
“I’m not completely okay yet, but I’m trying.”
And perhaps that is enough.
Maybe those words from the past will still return from time to time.
The difference, I hope, is that one day I will be able to answer them with my own voice.
I may still cry.
But I am beginning to understand that tears do not always mean I have returned to the beginning.
Sometimes they are simply evidence that there is still a part of me learning what it feels like to be safe.
So perhaps, for now, I do not need to keep the promise I made to stop crying.
I only need to make myself a new one:
When the tears come, I will not abandon myself.
And to the people who still ask me whether I am okay — perhaps I am not very good at showing you how much that means to me.
But I know you are there.
And on the days when those lingering voices become too loud inside my head, your presence reminds me that not every voice comes to blame me.
Some voices come simply to make sure I am still here.
