pathos

Currently listening to: Otherside – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Info Man asked her readers:

“So let me give you an opportunity to make a post , when you lost something or were so broken when they told u to be strong . Let me know about that post in the comments . Maybe I will forget about my sadness.”

I was fixin’ to write about this before but I don’t think I was in the proper headspace to do that. Today was a better day to write about such things. If I let the feeling linger too long, it takes over. It wraps itself around my chest, heavy and slow, until it’s all I can feel. I’ve learned to manage it, most days. Push it down. Tuck it away behind a smile or a joke. But sometimes, it leaks out—quietly, unexpectedly—and I have to face it again.

The truth is, this blog feels like the only place where I can be true to myself. Not because I don’t have people in my life who care, but because saying some things out loud feels dangerous. Heavy truths have a way of changing how people look at you. You speak them, and suddenly there’s a shift—subtle but unmistakable. The room gets quieter. The air feels tighter. And then come the comments, the advice you didn’t ask for, the judgment dressed as concern.

So I keep quiet.

Because silence, though isolating, feels safer than rejection or condemned.

Because once you open up and someone recoils, it’s not just painful—it confirms your worst fear: that your darkness makes you too much.

That’s another reason why I write. I write about positive things in my life but real life has dark and twisted paths as well.

Here, I can be messy. I can lay it all out—my imperfect life. I can name the fears that keep me up at night and the sadness that clings even in the bright hours of the day. I can make sense of the nonsense without worrying about making someone else uncomfortable because after all, if people don’t want to read about certain topics, they can always ignore the post and move on.

Trust issues don’t just appear out of nowhere. They build slowly, often rooted in a series of moments—but sometimes, all it takes is one. One that slices clean through everything I thought I understood about love, loyalty, and the people who were supposed to protect me.

For me, there were several instances but one that became a pivotal moment in my coming of age era came the day Chris (my very first boyfriend) called—after three years of absolute silence.

Three years of nothing. Not a letter. Not a word. Not even a rumor. I had convinced myself he had moved on, left me behind without so much as a goodbye. And in that silence, I shriveled. I wasn’t myself anymore. A shell of myself, really.

Anhedonia? Check.
Isolation? Check.
Delusional? Triple check.

If you ever watched New Moon from the Twilight Series, where Bella sat in her room for months. This was literally how I felt. The pain was my only reminder that he was real. The absence of him was everywhere I looked.

Every day, I replayed our memories like reruns of a show I couldn’t quit, a train wreck I couldn’t stop watching. It was the only thing that gave me any kind of comfort. The rest of the world moved on, but I stayed frozen—stuck in what was, never knowing there was more to the story.

My parents had always been uneasy about me dating Chris. He was “trouble,” according to them. My mom and dad rarely agreed on anything, but when it came to Chris, they were united in disapproval. It chipped away at the peace in our house and created a quiet tension, one that eventually turned into full-blown mistrust.

But nothing prepared me for what I learned the day he called.

It was an ordinary afternoon. My mom was working and my dad was out mowing the lawn. I was in my room, the melancholic melodies of Morrissey and The Smiths keeping me company, when the landline rang. I answered it, expecting a telemarketer or maybe one of my aunts.

Instead, I heard:
“Poopina?”

It was Chris. That old nickname hit me like a brick to the chest. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I froze. My hand shook as I held on to the receiver and then I cried. We both did.

When the tears eased, Chris asked if I had ever received his letters. Confused, I said no. He sounded crushed. That’s when he told me he had been calling—over and over. But every time he reached out, my parents shut it down. They hung up on him. They never told me. He didn’t have my new cell number, and he had no way to reach me directly.

He’d been trying, and I had no idea.

Turns out, during those three lost years, Chris had been locked up in Houston, Texas. His poor choices after leaving Minnesota and moving back with his mom caught up with him—gangs, unlicensed firearms, you name it. But through all of it, he said he never stopped thinking about me. Even behind bars, I was still his person.

Hearing that cracked something open in me. I didn’t know if I was floating or falling. All those years of pain, confusion, and self-blame—all for nothing. Or maybe not for nothing, but at least not for the reasons I had told myself every night before falling asleep.

Looking back, I can acknowledge that my dad was trying to protect me in the only way he knew how. Maybe he saw a version of Chris that terrified him. Maybe he thought silence would sever the bond before it could destroy me.

But secrecy like that doesn’t shield—it shatters. Learning they had blocked his letters and calls wasn’t just hurtful. It was betrayal. A painfully slow, silent type of agony that creeps in and stays lodged deep in your chest.

Did they not realize I was barely holding on? That for three fucking years, every day felt like Sunday—silent, grey, hollow?