the body remembers what we refuse to say

guilt doesn’t care about fairness: an essay

some days it feels like i’m dragging a second body inside mine, one that grew heavy from all the words i never said, all the truths i bent backward to swallow just to keep the peace. it doesn’t speak. it doesn’t scream. it just lives there, quiet and obedient, stitched under the skin like a shadow with weight.

most days, i move around it like it’s not there. i wash dishes, reply to emails, fold laundry, and keep up with the world’s rhythm like i’ve made peace with all of it. but then something small will happen, a spoon clinks too hard against the sink, or i knock over a glass and hear it hit the floor just a little too loud, and suddenly i feel it again, that ache. not sharp, but dense. like grief is pressing against my ribs, like i’m full of sand. last week i stood in the kitchen holding a peeled orange in my hand, and the scent of it hit me with such clarity that i had to sit down. i remembered how my grandma used to peel them in spirals, setting the skin aside in one clean piece. i never said anything then, about how lovely that small act was, about how i noticed. and now the memory sits under my skin, heavy with all the things i never told her when i had the chance.

but grief is only part of it. guilt is the real ghost. it’s quieter, but meaner. it doesn’t just ache, it rearranges things. it’s changed me in ways i’m still uncovering. it lives in the way my back subtly curls inward, as if bracing for a reprimand no one has spoken aloud. in the way i catch the inside of my cheek between my teeth whenever someone offers me care. recently, someone close to me, someone who knows how much i’ve been carrying, offered to pick up groceries for me after a long week of travel. i thanked them, smiled, nodded as if it were easy to receive. but later, as i stood in my kitchen unpacking what they’d brought, my stomach tightened. i felt off-balance, as if i had accepted something i couldn’t return. as if care, once extended toward me, became a weight i had to hold without shifting.

guilt has rewired the way i accept softness. it’s made me question good intentions, made me tense in the presence of gentleness. even the smallest act of kindness becomes a quiet test, and somewhere in the back of my mind, i’m always wondering if i passed. if i was grateful enough. if i gave enough back. it’s exhausting, this silent bookkeeping of affection. i think some part of me still believes that to be loved means to constantly earn it. and every time someone sees me, really sees me, without asking for anything in return, my instinct isn’t peace, it’s panic. i brace for loss. i wonder when the debt will be called in. and maybe you’ve felt it too, that strange hollowing in the chest when someone does something thoughtful for you, and instead of warmth, you feel unsteady. not because you didn’t want the kindness, but because somewhere along the way, you learned to question whether you were worth the softness you long for.

i think it starts early. for me, it started at home, in a house where love was never loud but always present. my father worked long hours and still came home to help me with my school projects, sitting cross-legged on the floor with chart paper and markers even when his eyes were bloodshot from sleep. i remember nights when i’d pretend to fall asleep just to see if he’d check in, and he always did, soft footsteps, a hand brushing back my hair, the sound of the fan shifting as he pulled the blanket up to my shoulders. my mother, on the other hand, loved in motions. she’d iron my uniforms before i woke up, leave cut fruit on the table before school, and sit on the edge of my bed at night folding clothes, her back aching, refusing to rest until everything was in place. they never asked for anything in return. and somehow that made it worse, because they gave so much without complaint, i started to believe love meant giving everything until there was nothing left.

now i carry that guilt in my chest like a stone. when they’re quiet, i assume they’re disappointed. when they seem tired or distant, i convince myself it’s something i’ve done. and it doesn’t stop with them. this guilt follows me into every room, every relationship. when someone i care about is sad, even if it has nothing to do with me, i feel the pull to fix it, to overcompensate. i hate letting people down. i panic at the idea of being the cause of someone’s heaviness. even when i know better, i can’t always believe it. and it’s started affecting how i love. how i receive love. there’s this constant fear that i’ll never be able to give enough back. that no matter how hard i try, i’ll always be in quiet debt to the people who show up for me.

and it’s hard to explain how that feels, to live in a body that translates kindness into burden. but maybe you know it too. maybe you’ve felt it in the way we immediately offer something back, even when no one’s asked us to. we say it so quickly, so instinctively: “let me know if you need anything,” “i can help with that,” “i owe you.” we say it before the thank-you has even settled in the air. and at some point, it stops being generosity and starts feeling rehearsed, like we’re machines trained to convert love into transaction. we move through care like it’s a ledger. it doesn’t matter if the gesture was small. the moment someone shows up for us, we start scanning the moment for how to balance it out. it’s not because we don’t feel gratitude, it’s because we feel it too much, too fast, too overwhelmingly. we can’t seem to sit still in someone else’s kindness without itching for a way to prove we deserve it. and in doing that, we erase the very thing we’re craving most: connection without condition.

sometimes i wonder if we even know what to do with ease anymore. if maybe we’ve learned to suppress our softness so well that when someone tries to hand it back to us, we don’t know how to hold it without shaking.

and the body remembers. god, it remembers in ways that bypass logic completely. even when your mind has reasoned, healed, let go, your body doesn’t follow as quickly. it clings. it replays. your body still flinches the way it did when love was unpredictable, when footsteps in the hallway meant you had to hold your breath, when the silence after a slammed door felt louder than any argument. it remembers the slow tension that built during dinner when they were upset, how your jaw locked even though the rice was warm and the table was set. i still find myself pouring two cups of coffee some mornings. not because i’m thinking of anyone consciously, but because for so long, that was the rhythm: one for me, one for them. my hands move out of habit, out of muscle memory. and when i notice, when i pause, i don’t cry.

i just stand there, holding the cup i no longer need to pour, feeling something hollow stretch in my chest. sometimes it’s not even about them. it’s about the part of me that existed when they were around, the part that formed routines around their presence. and in some strange way, that version of me still lingers in my bones.

but the body doesn’t just remember love. it remembers hurt. it remembers rot. the quiet kind, the kind that settles in slowly, like damp spreading under floorboards, unnoticed until something collapses. it remembers the sting of a look they once gave me across a room, sharp and dismissive, the way it lodged somewhere behind my ribs and never quite left. it remembers how their hand stayed at their side when i reached out, how their voice shifted when i was too much. it remembers the moments i shrank to keep the peace, when i swallowed whole truths just to avoid being seen as difficult. those silences live in my bones now. they’ve curled my posture, taught my body to fold in on itself as if smaller means safer. i carry the echo of arguments in the tightness of my jaw, the aftermath of abandonment in the ache behind my knees when i stand too long. and guilt, guilt lives everywhere. it pulses when someone is kind to me, even in the smallest way. a hand on my back, someone calling just to check in. my stomach clenches, and a voice inside me whispers that i haven’t earned it.

i try to wash it all off, all the time. i scrub my skin in the shower as if i can rinse away the imprint of every person who handled me carelessly and left their fingerprints anyway. i light incense, open the windows, change the sheets, wash my hair twice, but nothing ever feels clean enough. i can still feel them. the way they touched me when they weren’t fully there. the way they left without warning. the way their absence built a shape in me that still demands space. it doesn’t matter that they’re gone. i’m a mosaic of everything they ever did and didn’t do. stitched together by apologies i never received and explanations i stopped waiting for. i walk around with their ghosts folded into my muscles. and no matter how much i try to replace the weight with healing, there are days when my body still aches like they just left. and on those days, no matter how many candles i light or breaths i take, i still don’t feel clean. i just feel haunted.

sometimes i think we’re all haunted by the echoes of who we used to be when we were with someone else. how we softened in certain ways, hardened in others. and when it ends, when they leave or we walk away, we don’t just lose them. we lose the version of ourselves that existed only in that relationship. we grieve our own reflection. and the body holds onto that too. the body remembers the posture of being loved, even if it was uneven, even if it was fleeting. the way you leaned slightly toward the sound of their voice. the way your breath slowed when they walked into the room. now, even long after, your breath catches when the light looks a certain way or a song you didn’t even know was special starts to play.

and maybe that’s what makes guilt so insidious. it doesn’t just attach itself to what you did or didn’t do. it seeps into what you feel. it makes you question the shape of your own emotions. you feel guilty for being cared for, even when the care is gentle and freely given. guilty for needing anything at all. guilty for not healing on someone else’s timeline, for still missing the wrong person, for craving closeness when you promised yourself you’d be fine on your own. guilt makes you apologize for your silences, for your sadness, for the fact that some mornings you just wake up heavy and have no good reason to explain it. and when someone new enters your life and offers you softness, really offers it, not out of obligation but presence, you flinch. not because you don’t want it, but because somewhere along the way, you learned that accepting care meant owing something in return.

you don’t trust yourself to take without compensating. to sit in someone’s warmth without reaching immediately for a way to match it, mirror it, give it back fast enough so you don’t seem greedy. you think love is a currency, and if you can’t pay in equal tenderness, it’s only a matter of time before it’s taken away. and that fear, it’s not loud. it doesn’t shout. it just settles in your breath, in the way you reply to messages too quickly, in how your voice softens too much when you’re about to ask for something. you shrink. you minimize your wants. you pull away before they can offer again. because love, to you, has always arrived with fine print. conditions. consequences. and now, even when someone means well, even when they hold you without agenda, your mind starts scanning for exit signs.

and it’s not their fault. it’s not yours either. it’s the echo of all the times you gave and gave and were left empty. it’s the memory of being too much for someone who only knew how to take. guilt teaches you to mistrust joy. to hold back your hope. to second-guess your softness. and so you sit there, across from someone who looks at you like you’re worth everything, and you smile with your mouth while your chest tightens. because you still don’t know how to believe it’s safe to receive love without losing yourself in the process.

and maybe there’s no clean ending to that. no full circle. just the slow practice of trying to believe softness isn’t a trap. just the quiet work of staying, even when everything in you wants to run. just the small, sacred decision to try again tomorrow, and the next week and the one after that.

buy me a coffee