“The behaviors you established to endure will no longer be useful when it’s your moment to flourish.” ~Eboni Davis
From a young age, I learned to gauge the threats present in a room. With a self-centered mother, the mood could shift on a dime—her tone slicing through me, a reminder that my emotions didn’t matter.
An alcoholic stepfather amplified the menace, making it louder, more oppressive, and erratic. I recall bottles crashing against the counter, his voice escalating towards aggression, and holding my breath in the shadows, wishing to evade the tempest.
In that household, love was perilous. It was merely about survival. Survival entailed fading away—shrinking, muting, becoming unseen to avoid taking up space in an already tumultuous environment.
In that environment, I couldn’t simply be a child. My mother’s emotional state controlled everything—her anguish, her need for authority. With her, I concealed parts of my identity since nothing was ever satisfactory. With my stepfather, I crept around, vigilant for threats, preparing for outbursts.
Thus, I transformed into the quiet one. The mediator. The unseen daughter striving to hold the household together, even though I knew I couldn’t. I bore burdens far too heavy for my young shoulders, convinced it was my responsibility to mend things.
These behaviors didn’t remain in my childhood home; they trailed me into adulthood. I wore silence as if it were a second skin, vanishing in relationships when love felt threatening. I gave until I was empty, lost myself in others, hoping that remaining quiet and small might earn affection.
But love that demanded my disappearance was never genuine. It was survival once more. I repeated the same patterns, chose partners reflecting my chaotic upbringing, and shut down when emotions felt overpowering. Pain was confused with love, silence with safety; I consistently neglected myself.
The price: years of feeling invisible, unworthy, unrecognized. Years of believing my voice didn’t count, my needs were unreasonable, my narrative was to be concealed.
Having long accepted this was my identity—invisible, unworthy, destined to endure pain—a night came when even survival felt too burdensome. Sitting in the cold, in a tent I considered home, silence enveloped me. Dampness, flimsy blankets, and external noises reminded me of how unsafe and isolated I felt.
And instead of shutting down in silence, I murmured, “I can’t keep going on like this.” Trembling words, yet a lifeline—the first truthful words I had spoken to myself in years.
This wasn’t a dramatic change. Nothing transformed overnight. However, something within me stirred, a small flicker of truth I had not acknowledged: I deserved more than this. I was entitled to more than mere survival.
That whisper turned into a seed. I began writing again, releasing unexpressed thoughts onto paper. Gradually, they transformed into a lifeline—a means of reclaiming the voice that had been suppressed for so long. Each page reminded me that my story held value, even if no one else acknowledged it. Bit by bit, I started to embrace it.
Survival habits protect us, yet don’t have to define us. Disappearing provided safety. Remaining silent shielded me from uncontrollable conflicts. However, surviving is not the same as living, and those protective habits need not shape my future.