Yes, I Overreacted - That Was the Point

I said it softly, at first. Wrapped in silk, offered like a peace lily, all white petals and palatable phrasing. I carved the words delicately, made them small enough to swallow, digestible enough not to offend. I trimmed my sentences down to nothing. I made space. I nodded. I let you interrupt. I told the truth with its edges sanded off, like a child handing over a broken toy and apologising for the sharp bits.

I wasn’t asking for much - just acknowledgment, just a flicker of awareness, just something that proved I hadn’t imagined the weight I was carrying. And still, you didn’t hear me. Or worse, you did, and decided it wasn’t worth responding to. So yes, I raised my voice. I shattered the plate I’d been so carefully serving myself on. I scorched the edges. I made it ugly. Intentionally. Because I had been polite, and polished, and painfully reasonable, and all it earned me was invisibility.

You call it an overreaction like it wasn’t a last resort. Like I hadn’t already said it four different ways, at four different volumes, wearing four different versions of myself just to make it more comfortable for you to hear. But you only took notice when it got inconvenient. When I stopped editing myself mid-sentence. When I stopped cushioning every truth with a nervous smile.

I swallowed my own feelings so many times they settled like grit in my gut -bitter, acidic, sharp enough to cut through the layers of quiet I wrapped myself in. And the one time I let them out, not carefully, not prettily, but in full, burning colour, you flinch. You recoil, as if you weren’t the one who handed me the match.

I wasn’t looking to be palatable. I was looking to be heard. To be felt, even. And if I had to light the room on fire for you to finally look up, then so be it. Only when the ground gives way do you finally see the fault lines. You only listen when my fury comes dressed in red.

You only call it emotional when I stop performing composure for your convenience. It’s funny - how quiet is noble until it turns into silence, and silence becomes dangerous once it’s broken. Quiet is easy to ignore. But the cracks? The cracks demand attention.

So yes, I overreacted, loud and bright and messy, because subtlety has already failed me. Because apparently, I have to become unbearable before I’m believed. I’ve stopped asking nicely. I’ve stopped playing the understudy in my own monologue. If it takes spectacle to make you see me, then I hope the ashes stain your shoes.