Therapy Bits

There was a room I lived in that no one could see.
It followed me like a shadow stitched to my small back.
The air inside it was made of whispers and the sound of breathing I couldn’t control.
I learned early that silence was a language — fluent, invisible, and safer than truth.

The days went on like normal — cereal, cartoons, scraped knees —
but underneath everything hummed a secret I didn’t have words for.
When I tried to speak, my voice would vanish,
as if the world turned down its volume just for me.

Years later, I learned to name things.
Names are powerful; they make ghosts real enough to release.
The room is smaller now, its walls made of memory instead of fear.
Sometimes I visit it — not to live there, but to remember how far I’ve walked.

Healing is not light breaking through a window; it is the slow growing of roots
in soil that once refused to hold anything alive.
And though I still feel the echo of that old quiet,
I know now that my voice is the opposite of what was done to me.
It exists. It stays. It sings.

Nightmare – Word of the Day Challenge