Lately, I’ve been feeling like a faker. To everyone around me, it looks like I’m doing fine — I go to work, hit the gym, have dinner with friends, keep myself busy. But the truth is, I’ve been living in silence, quietly piecing myself back together after one of the hardest years of my life. Bit by bit. Day by day.
It’s exhausting, carrying both the weight of rebuilding and the act of pretending I’m okay. Some days I want to tell everyone how hard it really is, how fragile everything still feels. But instead, I just nod, laugh, and keep going.
No one knows how much work it takes just to seem normal again. Maybe that’s why it feels so lonely — because healing, for the most part, happens in silence.
— Brooke Allen, 35, Seattle, WA
