The Silent Murder of Instinct

“When you betray yourself, you also betray those who could have known the real you.” — Adrienne Rich

I let the room breathe
while my own lungs locked up.

I stayed soft
when the sound in my chest
told me to walk.

Every time I swallowed the warning,
a thread in me snapped.
Thin at first.
Then thicker.

The fabric didn’t tear in one place.
It frayed across years,
leaving me wrapped in something
that never fit.

Now my silence carries
the weight of every no
I turned into a yes.

And my body still remembers
who I abandoned
to keep the peace.

“Self-trust erodes when you’ve spent years overriding your instincts to keep the peace.”

There’s a violence in pretending you’re fine. It cuts deeper than the conflict you were trying to avoid. Every time you silence your gut, you stage a small funeral inside yourself. Nobody notices the coffin, but you carry it. And the weight multiplies.

Instinct isn’t polite. It doesn’t wait for the room to agree. It slams the brakes, locks the throat, freezes the body. That reaction is truth in its rawest form. Years of ignoring it won’t erase it. They’ll only twist it into panic, or nu…