The Silent War
Open up, don’t be afraid to feel too much. I know, it’s hard. I write rationally, but inside I’m exploding. I don’t even know where to start, because I’ve never really understood everything that happened to me. It’s strange, but not really, when you’re one of those who feels everything. For years I repressed every emotion. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t know how to handle them. They drowned me. I was like a faulty battery: full of energy at times, and then suddenly... completely drained. Then something else happened. I started feeling other people’s emotions too. Someone else’s pain became mine, without filters. I told myself to stop. “Enough, this pain doesn’t belong to you.” But I couldn’t. And the helplessness was killing me. Until one day I said stop in a different way. I shut everything off. I turned myself off. I didn’t feel anything anymore. I was empty. I laughed, talked, even cried… but nothing really touched me. I had turned off my emotions, but with them, I turned off life too. I controlled everything. Every heartbeat, every breath. But the body is smart. When you ignore it, it screams. Panic attacks came. And with them, anxiety gripping your stomach and stealing your breath. Every time I tried to push it away, it got worse. The more I hated myself, the more the pain grew. Because that’s how it works: a thought becomes an emotion, the emotion becomes an action. It’s a chain. And I pulled that chain so tight I strangled myself. I told myself “stop feeling bad,” but all I did was make it worse. Until one day I said something new. “I don’t want to feel bad anymore.” And there I understood. I had to do exactly the opposite of what I’d done so far. I had forgotten to love myself. And when you stop loving yourself, everything you touch goes bad. I remember the last attack, on a train. I felt the wave coming: sweaty hands, heat, racing heart. In those eternal ten minutes… I breathed. I talked to myself like a nurse with her patient: “It’s okay, you’re breathing. One step at a time.” And so I stopped it. No meds. Just presence. But it didn’t end there. I needed something more: a visualization. So I pictured myself at Niagara Falls, on the edge, ready to fall. The water as pain. Arms open, trying to stop the wave. But then I slowly lowered them. That gesture was acceptance. Welcoming pain, without anger. Every time I pictured that scene, the attack vanished. I learned to be kind to myself. No doctor understood it. Not even me, really. But it’s like this: the brain is elastic. If you can shape it to self-destruct, then you can also shape it to heal. Years later, I discovered I have divergent thinking. That thing that makes you see a thousand solutions… or a thousand abysses. And so I asked myself: is it a gift or a curse? Maybe neither. It’s just a characteristic. A part of me. Not a disorder. Not an illness. This war inside… isn’t over. Maybe it never was a war. It was fear. Fear of knowing who I really am. And maybe, deep down, I always knew. I was hiding from myself. I never thought I’d write this. But here it is. It’s here. I’m not publishing it for you. I’m publishing it for who I was. For those out there, silently dying without a word. I don’t have a key to offer. I only have the fact that I’m still here. And maybe, that… is something.
