You’ve Handled It So Well

“You’ve handled all of this so well.”

My mom said that to me one day.

She meant it as a compliment.

I know she did.

But my first thought surprised even me.

I didn’t want to handle it well.

I didn’t want to handle it at all.

There were days I wanted to disappear.

Not forever.

Just…

long enough.

I wanted to drive without a destination.

Turn off my phone.

Ignore every responsibility.

I wanted to yell.

Break something.

Tell people exactly what I thought.

Make spectacularly bad decisions.

Not because I believed they would help.

Because for one brief moment…

I wanted the outside of my life to look as chaotic as the inside felt.

I never did those things.

But I thought about them.

And I think there’s an important difference.

Sometimes we confuse composure with peace.

They’re not the same thing.

One of the hardest parts of handling something well…

is that people often assume it wasn’t that hard.

I used to love watching Dancing with the Stars.

The professionals made everything look effortless.

So naturally…

I decided ballroom dancing would probably come easily to me.

It did not.

Apparently rhythm is a gift.

One I was not given.

Following someone else’s lead turned out to be much harder than watching someone else do it.

That’s the funny thing about almost anything difficult.

The people who become good at carrying heavy things often make them look light.

Not because they are.

Because they’ve learned how to carry them.

There’s a sentence I’ve been thinking about lately.

Just because someone carries it well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.

I wish more people believed that.

We never really know what’s happening behind someone else’s smile.

Behind their productivity.

Behind the emails they answered.

The meetings they attended.

The jokes they told.

The dinner they made.

A broken heart doesn’t make much noise.

At least mine didn’t.

Some hearts break loudly.

They scream.

They explode.

They self-destruct.

Mine broke quietly.

I went to work.

Walked my dog.

Answered texts.

Paid bills.

Made coffee.

Smiled at people.

Then cried in the shower.

Pain doesn’t become more real because it’s louder.

And it doesn’t become smaller because it’s silent.

It’s still pain.

I’ve realized there are all kinds of sounds a broken heart can make.

Some people assign it anger.

Some assign it addiction.

Some assign it isolation.

Some assign it busyness.

Some of us…

assign it silence.

None of those sounds tell us how deeply someone is hurting.

They only tell us how their pain found its way into the world.

Maybe that’s why kindness matters so much.

Because we simply don’t know.

The person smiling beside you may have cried the whole drive to work.

The person who seems calm may be using every ounce of strength they have to stay standing.

The person everyone says is “handling it so well”…

may simply be handling it quietly.

And quiet doesn’t mean easy.

It just means you can’t hear it.