If I’m brave enough to tell the real truth, ungraceful, unapologetic and messy, I have to admit this: what I complain about the most is silence.
Not the peaceful, sacred quiet kind that feels like rest.
I mean the hollow kind.
The echoing kind.
The kind that makes your chest feel like an abandoned room.
The kind that feels like being forgotten.
Like being quietly set aside.
Like a sentence handed down for loving too much.
I complain about waiting.
About hoping.
About checking my phone too often.
About staring at empty spaces where reassurance should live.
About the space between messages, between promises, between moments of closeness that never quite settle into certainty.
I complain about loving with a heart that refuses to be quiet.
I complain about the not-knowing, so much emotional limbo of almost, maybe, soon, someday.
About caring more than feels dignified.
About longing so loudly it sometimes disguises itself as frustration, impatience, or anger.
But if I strip it down to the bone, here’s the confession underneath the complaining:
I don’t complain because I’m shallow.
I complain because I’m so damn fragile.
I don’t complain because I’m ungrateful.
I complain because I’m wounded.
Sometimes it feels like I’m being punished for the size of my own heart.
As if loving deeply is a crime.
As if longing is something I should apologize for.
As if the depth of my devotion is a flaw that needs to be corrected by distance, silence, and restraint.
It can feel like I’m being taught, over and over, that wanting is dangerous and no good.
That hope should be smaller.
That love should be quieter.
That the price of depth is learning how to suffer politely.
I complain because I feel like I’m always the one reaching.
Always the one waiting.
Always the one trying to make peace with uncertainty while my chest quietly caves in.
My complaints are grief in disguise.
They’re devotion with nowhere to land.
They’re love pacing the floor, restless and unsheltered, aching to be answered.
I complain because I feel too much, way too damn much,
because my heart doesn’t know how to do anything halfway,
because when I attach, I attach with my soul,
because silence can feel like abandonment even when it isn’t meant to be.
And beneath all the venting, spiraling, and overthinking, there’s a softer truth I don’t always say out loud:
I’m not angry.
I’m aching.
I’m not bitter.
I’m grieving.
I’m not dramatic.
I’m hurting,
and trying to understand why love sometimes feels like a punishment instead of a gift.
Maybe what I complain about the most
isn’t other people,
or circumstances,
or fate.
Maybe I complain about
how much I love,
and how much it hurts to keep loving anyway.
And maybe that isn’t a flaw.
Maybe it’s a confession.
Maybe it’s evidence.
Maybe it’s proof
that my heart is still fiercely, painfully alive.
