Every morning, I commit a quiet atrocity. To become the girl the world expects, the one who is “fine,” the one who is “strong,” the one who handles it all, I have to step into the foundry of my own mind and dismantle the only soft thing left. It isn’t a metaphor. It is the literal, rhythmic crushing of the bones of my inner child. I feel the snap and the grind of her ribs under my weight, a brutal architecture designed to turn her vulnerability into my defense. The most agonizing part isn’t the pain itself; it is the requirement of silence. If I let out a single scream, the facade is ruined. If I gasp, the world sees the girl instead of the iron. I have to crush her in a vacuum, a soundless slaughter that leaves me standing tall.
I peel the skin of her innocence to forge the straps of my breastplate. I take the blood she would have used to blush or cry and I use it to polish the surface until it gleams. People look at me and see a girl who is glowing, a girl who is “thriving.” They don’t realize they are looking at a crime scene polished to a high shine. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a “strong, confident woman.” I see a hollow statue. Behind the visor of this armor, I see her. I see her small, bruised face pressed against the inside of the metal. She is wailing. She is hitting the walls of my chest with what is left of her hands, screaming a single question that echoes through my marrow: “How much longer? Until when do I have to die so that you can live?”
The armor works. When the world throws its insults, its coldness, and its expectations at me, they hit the bone-metal and bounce off. I do not flinch. I smile. I am the “strong girl.” But every time a blow lands, the armor vibrates, and it is the child inside who feels the shockwave. She is the one absorbing the impact of a life she never asked to lead. I used to tell myself this was a sacrifice for her sake. I told her, “Stay quiet, stay small, let me build this cage around you so the world cannot touch you.” I thought that if I made the walls thick enough, the blows of life would never reach her. I thought I was a guardian.
But as the years pass and the armor thickens, the truth becomes impossible to ignore: the armor does not protect her; it just keeps her from being seen while she suffers. There is a terrifying stillness in being a walking coffin. When you are encased in a facade of bone and blood-polish, you are no longer a living being. You are a monument to the things you have survived. The world looks at the metal and thinks I am invincible, but inside, the child is suffocating. She is trapped in a dark, airless space where no sunlight reaches, no kindness can penetrate, and no one can hear her wails.
The tragedy of this strength is its absolute isolation. When the blow lands, the armor holds, but the vibration shatters the child inside. When the hug comes, the child feels nothing but the cold, hard inner lining of the metal. When love is offered, it cannot get through the bone. It just pools on the surface like rain on a grave. I have built a suit of armor so perfect and so impenetrable that it has become my own sarcophagus. I am walking through my life, holding my breath, performing the “confident girl” for an audience that has no idea they are watching a funeral procession for one. The armor is not keeping me safe. It is just ensuring that when I finally crumble, I will do it where no one can see, crushing the child one last time under the weight of the very thing I built to “save” her.
For more dispatches from behind the facade, follow my page at Her Campus at MUJ.