Some people hurt you while smiling. Their kindness looks soft, and it still hurts. If you grew up thinking that staying quiet keeps you safe, you learn to ignore the alarm in your body when someone like that is around. Emotional neglect is mostly about what you never got. Nobody listened to you, nobody stayed with you, and nobody let you speak without going cold on you. So you stop crying, because nobody comes. You stop asking, because you know the answer will be no. Your body keeps all of it inside.
For years I could smile, nod, do well in school, even love people, and still feel almost nothing inside. I was always on guard. Every time I walked into a room, I checked who might get angry, who might go quiet, and who I needed to be to get through the day. I later learned this has a name, the fawn response. It looks like people-pleasing, and it’s really how a scared person survives. You become someone else to keep the peace, and you lose yourself.
Now I live alone in Buffalo, far from my family, my old relationships, and the city I grew up in. It’s quiet here, and I’m getting to know myself in that quiet. Some days I feel like I’m falling apart, and some days I feel like I’m starting over. It’s slow and it hurts. Old memories come back. I remember who I was told to be and what I hid. I’m trying to take care of the little girl in me who was never comforted, and to tell her, “I hear you now.”
I’m scared of how invisible fake kindness is. It makes you feel like you’re too much, like you’re the problem, like you should be grateful. The way out is telling the truth, even when it shakes you. Boundaries help me. They tell people where I end and they begin. I’m learning that real kindness doesn’t ask me to perform, and that love isn’t something I have to earn by putting up with pain. If someone’s “niceness” makes your body tense up, trust that feeling. If you feel angry, listen to it. And if you’re alone right now, maybe you’re starting something new.
