There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from maintaining a version of yourself that was designed by other people.
It’s the weight of the “Proper Woman” folder. The “Resilient Professional” folder. The “Good Daughter” folder. We carry these labels like armor, but eventually, the armor starts to feel like a casket. Social stigma is the lock on that casket—telling us that if we show the grit, the anger, or the “unpolished” truth of our experience, we’ll lose everything.
The Breaking Point
We are conditioned to fear the fallout of our own authenticity. We’re told that our “juicy” truths—the ones that involve pain, rebellion, or non-conformity—are too much for the world to handle. So, we file them away in the back of the cabinet, under a label marked “NEVER.”
But here is the secret the world doesn’t want you to know: The world can handle it. It’s your spirit that can’t handle the lie. The stress of holding it all in doesn’t just stay in your head. It lives in your jaw, your shoulders, and the way you breathe. It’s a slow-motion suffocating. Breaking that conditioning isn’t a polite process. It’s a riot. It’s pulling every folder out of that cabinet and setting a match to the ones that were written in someone else’s handwriting.
Reclaiming the Narrative
My writing isn’t here to give you a “five-step plan” to happiness. It’s here to talk about the smoke and the ashes left behind when you finally stop caring about the stigma. It’s about the freedom found in being “too much.”
If the version of you that everyone loves is a lie, do you really want to keep it? Or are you ready to see what happens when the mask finally cracks?
I’m done filing away my truth to make others comfortable.