Crow and Flame

You handled it well.

You seem so calm.

You have it all together.

You’re so strong.

These are the compliments people offer when they don’t know what else to say.

When the story is too heavy.

When the pain is inconvenient.

When survival looks tidy from the outside.

They see composure and call it strength.

They see quiet and assume peace.

They see movement and think healing is complete.

What they don’t see is the work it takes to look okay.

Calm is not the absence of fear.

It is fear held very, very still.

It is breath measured carefully so nothing spills over.

It is the discipline of keeping your face neutral while your nervous system is screaming.

I learned early how to hold myself together in public.

How to make my voice steady.

How to nod, smile, continue.

How to become reliable, capable, unremarkable in my pain.

There is safety in being “fine.”

There is protection in being the one who doesn’t fall apart.

But that doesn’t mean I am whole.

Alone, the performance ends.

Alone, I take off the armor piece by piece and feel the weight of it all at once.

The thoughts I kept in check during the day circle back at night.

The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.

Anxiety hums beneath my skin like a live wire, never fully powering down.

Alone, I tear myself to pieces—

not loudly,

not dramatically,

but methodically.

I replay conversations.

I question my worth.

I punish myself for needs I believe are too much.

I negotiate with old coping mechanisms that promise relief but demand a price.

This is the side of strength no one celebrates.

The part that doesn’t look brave.

The part that doesn’t earn praise.

We call it resilience, but often it is just endurance.

We call it strength, but often it is learned self-abandonment.

The ability to keep going even when stopping would mean feeling everything at once.

When people say “you’re so strong,” what they often mean is:

You make your pain easy to be around.

You don’t ask too much.

You don’t make us uncomfortable.

And maybe I’ve learned how to do that well.

But strength that requires silence is not healing.

Functioning without rest is not recovery.

Having it “together” does not mean the pieces fit—it just means I know how to hold them.

I don’t want to be admired for how much I can carry alone.

I don’t want praise for my ability to endure quietly.

I want space to be honest about the cost.

Because there is a cost.

It shows up in exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.

In hypervigilance disguised as responsibility.

In the way my body tightens before my mind understands why.

In the grief of realizing how long I’ve mistaken survival for safety.

So no—

I’m not calm.

I’m contained.

I don’t have it all together.

I’m holding it together.

And I’m not strong in the way people imagine.

I am human.

Still healing.

Still learning how to rest without guilt.

Still practicing how to let myself be seen without armor.

Crow and Flame understands this kind of fire.

Fire doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes it burns low and steady, hidden beneath ash, conserving itself.

Sometimes staying alive is the bravest work it does.

And sometimes, the strongest thing a person can do

is admit that survival has been expensive—

and they are tired of paying for it alone.