The Stories We Choose
Not to Tell

There are stories I choose not to tell.
Not because I cannot tell them.
Not because I am afraid to tell them.
Not because time has made them less painful.

They are my stories. But they are not my stories alone.

‍Lives intersect.
Moments are shared with others, because of others, and perhaps in spite of others.

Every life has a story. Every heart tells a story. Every story has a parallel.

My story contains someone else’s failure.
My story contains someone else’s vulnerabilities.
My story contains someone else’s private history.
My story contains someone else’s version of events.

Owning my experience does not give me the autonomy to expose someone else’s story.

Protecting the boundaries of a partially revealed story can feel suffocating.
Stories will transform until the truth beneath them can breathe even without full revelation.

I move forward while keeping an old injury carefully preserved.
I have built a life despite the injury while being aware of the space the injury was occupying.

Sometimes there is anger.
Sometimes there is guilt.
Sometimes there is sadness.

But those sometimes can outlive their usefulness.

Holding on to those sometimes can feel principled and required.

As though peace means the injury was deserved.
As though moving forward means the injury does not matter.
As though refusing to carry the injury any longer absolves the cause of the injury.

The injury did not become acceptable because I stopped being angry.
The truth does not change because I choose inner peace.
The past does not need to be rewritten to reclaim my future.

This realization is not without its own story and questions.

How much more of myself am I willing to surrender to an old injury?

There are losses that cannot be recovered.
Time can be a cruel reminder or a promise of hope.

I know there are conversations that will never occur.
I know there are explanations that may never make sense.
I know people may never understand the consequences of the injuries they inflict.
I know people may understand the harm they have caused and not care.

Yesterday, I thought resolution required the person who inflicted the injury to act.

An acknowledgment.
An apology.
Understanding.
Accountability.
Regret.

What happens if the apology never comes?
What happens if they remember differently?
What happens if they have forgotten entirely?
What happens if the person responsible for something I have carried for years has been living freely while I have remained faithfully at my post, guarding the injury?

That was a difficult possibility to consider.
Not because it makes the injury less real.
Because it makes the cost more visible.

Today, I realize that awaiting their actions gives them the power to continue writing my story.

There is a difference between remembering and remaining.

I can remember.
I can know exactly what happened.
I can refuse to pretend it was something other than what it was.
I can maintain boundaries that became necessary because of it.
I can even decide that some relationships cannot be restored.

I thought letting go required surrendering or denying the truth.

I can put the hurt down without returning it to the person who gave it to me.
There are stories I still will not tell.
That has not changed.

Some details belong to other people.
Privacy does not require innocence.
Discretion does not erase accountability.
Silence does not erase the injury.

I recognize that I have forfeited my responsibility to myself.
I have a responsibility to what remains of my own life.

To the moments in my future.
To the parts of me that will no longer organize themselves indefinitely around what has already taken place.

I cannot recover everything that has been taken.
I cannot make every ending fair.
I cannot require another person to understand my truth before I permit myself to live beyond it.

I can decide what receives access to me now.
An old injury has taken enough.

It does not get to take what remains.

Beware what continues taking long after it has already taken enough.