This Time In My Words

The First Lesson

I don’t remember the exact day it happened.
But I remember the feeling.

I was young—too young to understand emotions, but old enough to feel the weight of them.
Something had happened that hurt. I don’t remember exactly what it was… or maybe I do, but I’m not ready to say it out loud.

I just remember needing comfort.
Wanting someone to ask if I was okay.

No one did.

And I learned something that day:
If no one asks, you hold it.
If no one sees it, you hide it.
If it makes people uncomfortable, you swallow it whole.

What I Carried

That’s where I began.
Not in innocence, but in silence.
Not in joy, but in performance.

I learned to smile through the ache.
To laugh when I wanted to cry.
To say “I’m fine” so I wouldn’t be a problem.

I was praised for being mature. For being helpful. For “knowing how to handle things.”
But I wasn’t handling anything.
I was just folding myself into something smaller
so no one would notice I was breaking.

And the more I did it, the more it stuck.

I became the one who held space for everyone else.
The one who never needed anything.
The one who could be quietly falling apart in the background
and still show up with a smile.

Because being needed felt like being wanted.
And not needing anything felt like being safe.

The Body Keeps Score

Now, years later, I realise I never really stopped performing.
I just got better at hiding it.

But the body remembers.
And so does the heart.

This blog is me choosing something else.
A soft rebellion against all the silence I grew up with.
A space to say the things I’ve spent years pretending didn’t matter.

Because to understand who I am now,
I have to start with when I stopped being allowed to feel.

That’s where I began.
And this—this is where I begin again.

—Liv 🤍