If They’re Happy, Maybe I’ll Be Safe

Some of us didn’t learn to fight. We learned to smile. This is how I made my fear look holy enough to keep me safe.

I learned early: pleasure is protection.
Their comfort, my shield.
Their happiness, my hiding place.
If they smiled, I was less afraid.
If they stayed pleased, maybe they wouldn’t leave,
wouldn’t raise their voice,
wouldn’t look at me like I was a mistake burning skin-deep.

So I mastered the art of self-erasure,
one grin at a time.
I read every room like scripture:
where to stand, where to shrink,
how to bend just enough
that no one noticed the crack splintering my spine.

If they’re smiling, I’m safe.
If they’re laughing, I’m needed.
If they’re angry, I’m the reason.
I made peace a hostage I paid ransom for daily
with my own throat.

It was never protection.
It was prison dressed as kindness,
and I wore it holy,
until the day I realized I was the only one bleeding
to keep the room calm.

They call it people-pleasing like it’s gentle.
Like it’s sweet.
Like it’s a virtue worth praising.

No one wants to admit it’s really fear wearing a polite smile.
Fear of slammed doors, of cold shoulders, of voices raised like knives,
of being called too much, too sharp, too needy to keep.

I built a sanctuary out of other people’s comfort.
Their laughter was my shield, their praise my softest armor.
I thought if I made myself easy to love,
smooth, agreeable, grin wide enough to hide the bruise,
then maybe they’d stay soft with me.

Maybe they’d stay, period.
But peace kept costing me my own mouth.
My own bones.
My own right to say enough.

This poem is not an apology for that old survival trick,
it’s a gravestone for it.
A witness to the small quiet murders I committed against myself
just to keep the air from turning cold.

So read it like a warning or a prayer:
next time the room wants your softness as ransom,
let it stay hungry.

Let them learn to sit with your sharp edges
without asking you to sand them down.
Some of us were taught to make peace with our own disappearance.
Some of us are done disappearing.

I know better now:
peace should never cost your own throat.
If the room wants calm,
it can learn to hold my sharpness
without bleeding me dry.

You’re not a subscriber,
you’re a co-conspirator.
This is a room where silence loses every time we open our teeth together.

Stay. Bring your confession.
Bring your version too loud for polite company.
Here, your rage is holy.
Your softness is armed.
Your boundaries are not up for polite debate.

Every poem you read here is a rib torn loose, a page refusing to stay dead.
Soon they’ll bind themselves into a living thing called Shadow Thoughts: The Silence That Kept Me.
Not tidy self-help but a mirror that won’t flinch when you do.

I don’t know when it’ll wear a spine and a barcode.
I don’t care.
It’s alive now.
Feral. Soft. Dripping on your screen whether you’re ready or not.

Stay loud enough to make the polite ones flinch.
Stay honest enough to scare the hush that raised you.
Stay. We’re louder together.

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P.S.
If this stirred something in you,
it might speak to someone else too.
Feel free to pass it on.

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