I spent most of my life being the person who stays quiet when I’m hurt.
Someone forgets to loop me into something, a plan forms without me, a moment happens that I wasn’t part of — and I swallow it.
I get quiet, then I get over it, and the friendship moves on like nothing ever happened.
That pattern has followed me through friend groups, through seasons of life, through year-long stretches where things drifted and no one really understood why. I never said anything. I just… adjusted. Slipped out the side door, emotionally. Let the wound carry itself.
So when eight of my closest friends packed up for a weekend away — one of those under-one-roof trips I love and had talked about planning this winter — it hit that old nerve in a very familiar way.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t just quietly accept it.
I actually said something.
I told them where I had been emotionally. That it wasn’t about Galena at all — it was about a moment I can’t get back, a group memory formed without me. I told them it stirred up a long-held fear of being the odd one out, something I’ve carried since childhood but rarely gave voice to.
Jack responded first.
He apologized, not out of guilt, but understanding — he knew it was the kind of trip I’d been wanting to do, and he acknowledged that he should’ve spoken up when the planning started.
That acknowledgment landed deeper than he probably realized.
Not because I needed someone to blame, but because one of my closest friends saw the actual loss I was naming.
He understood where the ache was really coming from.
I thanked him, because the honesty grounded me.
I told him I was working through old stuff, and that the sting had softened in a way I didn’t expect — partly because I still went to Joe’s family dinner the night before.
I almost skipped it.
I almost stayed home to sulk and spin.
But instead I walked into a house where I barely knew anyone, carrying store-bought rolls — a very out-of-character move for a person who usually shows up with a homemade dish like it’s a culinary audition.
And someone at that table — one of Joe’s gym friends who knows nothing about my usual “show up perfect” tendencies — said something that cracked something open in me.
They noticed how out of character it was and told me to lean into it anyway, to embrace the weird moment where I didn’t have to perform, where I could just show up and be present for once.
It was such a simple comment.
But it soothed me in a way I didn’t know I needed.
I sat there passing dishes among people who weren’t “my” group, weren’t my history, weren’t tied into the weekend that triggered everything — and I felt something settle.
Not fixed.
Not erased.
But softened.
Held.
And then Kyle reached out with even more love — reinforcing the same thing from another direction:
I am loved.
I am held.
I am part of something.
But here’s the part that surprised me:
Saying the thing I had swallowed for decades didn’t push anyone away.
It pulled people closer.
It didn’t break the friendship.
It actually let my friends meet me where the real wound was, not where the silence usually hides it.
And I realized — maybe for the first time — that healing doesn’t always come from the people who triggered the hurt. Sometimes it comes from unexpected tables of people passing you the mashed potatoes and reminding you, without even realizing it, that you belong somewhere.
Maybe that’s what this whole moment is:
the first time I didn’t quietly disappear inside myself.
The first time I trusted a friendship with my vulnerability.
The first time I let other people hold me instead of holding everything alone.
The weekend didn’t break me.
Speaking up finally freed me.
And maybe the real miracle is that I finally said the thing I spent a lifetime swallowing — and the world didn’t collapse.
It opened.