What People Think They See

People look at me and they think they know my story. They see the woman standing here now, steady, creating, carving out pieces of beauty in the world... and they build their own version of how I must have gotten here. They don’t see the years I spent buried in silence thick as tar, dragging myself out of bogs that swallowed whole pieces of me. They don’t know what it costs to keep breathing when your lungs are full of mud and your ribs are splintered from carrying everything alone. They think survival leaves you shiny and clean, but survival is jagged, and it stains. I didn’t rise from the pit; I crawled, clawed, ripped myself from the hands that tried to keep me down. I left parts of myself behind because I had no choice. I walked away carrying scars like maps... roads I never wanted to take but couldn’t avoid... and they still have the nerve to call it privilege.

I remember the weight of nights where I couldn’t tell if my chest would rise again. I remember the coldness of hands that claimed they loved me and the sharpness of words that stripped me raw. I remember being told to be quiet, to take it, to survive without making noise, as though silence would save me. But silence never saved me. It buried me deeper, pulled me into rooms where the air turned rotten and the walls whispered I’d never get out. And yet somehow, I did. Not because it was easy. Not because there was a ladder waiting. But because I tore myself out of those places inch by inch, bleeding from knuckles and lungs, carrying nothing but a small, furious spark that refused to die. That isn’t privilege. That’s war. And I’ve been fighting mine longer than most people can imagine.

People want the version of me that creates, that builds, that softens the edges of the world with art and words and scents and meaning. They want the strength without the scars, the light without the cost. They see my calm now and think it comes from ease, not from wrestling my way back from the brink over and over. And when I draw lines to protect myself, when I say no, when I choose where my energy goes, they call me cold. They say I have no reason to keep walls so high. But my boundaries aren’t walls built from fear. They’re gates carved from blood, from the bones of who I used to be. I learned the hard way that letting people take and take until there’s nothing left will bury you faster than any bog ever could. I won’t let anyone drag me back into silence.

I have earned every breath in my chest, every scar on my body, every word I’ve written, every creation I’ve pressed into the world. These are not gifts handed to me. They’re remnants of battles I never asked to fight but fought anyway. They’re proof I didn’t stay down when the weight of the world told me to disappear. So when people look at me now and dare to tell me I’ve had it easy, when they mistake my open hands for endless giving, when they assume I have no edges, no limits, no cost, I want them to stand where I’ve stood. I want them to feel the tar closing over their lungs and see if they come back breathing. I want them to know what it means to be stripped bare and still build yourself again, piece by fractured piece, without apology and without permission.

I am not here because life has been kind. I am here because I refused to vanish. I am here because I chose to pull myself out of pits designed to keep me buried. I am here because I turned my pain into something living, something that roars, something they cannot take from me. They don’t see the bones beneath my feet or the blood in my story. They don’t hear the nights I screamed myself quiet. But I know. My body knows. My scars know. And because of that, I live loud now, carving my name into the marrow of this world. I am not boundaryless. I am built of boundaries. And every single one is stitched together from the pieces of me I refused to let them keep.