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Chapter 1: For Those Who Were Never Heard
Part 1
Do you know what's more exhausting than working?
Trying to make someone understand what you're trying to say.
Work wears your body down.
Explaining the same thing over and over again...
that wears down your soul.
At some point in life, you stop explaining yourself.
Not because you get tired of talking.
No.
You get tired of repeating yourself.
And repeating yourself is far more exhausting than explaining.
When you're explaining, there's still hope.
You think maybe they didn't understand.
Maybe you didn't say it the right way.
Maybe the timing was off.
Maybe you simply chose the wrong words.
But repeating yourself...
that's something else.
Repeating yourself means realizing they understood perfectly well.
They just couldn't care less.
And that pisses you off.
Because now it isn't a communication problem.
It's a willingness problem.
There's a huge difference between someone not hearing you...
and realizing they never wanted to.
It happened to me.
And if I'm being honest...
I'm almost certain it's happened to you too.
Because we've all had conversations with a brick wall.
You explain.
You make your case.
You take a deep breath.
You explain it again.
You look for different words.
You soften your tone.
You swallow your frustration.
You even put on that enlightened, spiritually evolved face—you know, the kind of people who post Buddha quotes on social media, drink lemon water every morning, meditate for ten minutes, and swear they've healed.
And the other person?
They don't even blink.
That's when you start wondering if maybe you're the problem.
Maybe I came on too strong.
Maybe I was too harsh.
Maybe it wasn't the right moment.
Maybe I should've taken a deep breath.
Counted to ten.
Grabbed a Coke.
Who knows...
Maybe I should've spoken with more love.
All those excuses we invent because admitting the truth is much harder.
The truth is...
the problem isn't the way you speak.
The problem is that some people only ask questions after they've already decided which answer they want to hear.
And if you don't give them exactly that...
they pretend they didn't hear you.
Or worse...
they get offended.
It's really that simple.
People love saying,
"Just tell me the truth."
And every time I hear that...
I hesitate.
Because that sentence always comes with a trap.
It's just like when someone says,
"You won't get mad... right?"
The moment you hear that...
you already know a bomb is about to explode.
"Tell me the truth."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Okay..."
So you take a deep breath.
Say a silent prayer for their soul.
And then...
you tell them the truth.
Five minutes later...
you're the villain.
The cruel one.
The dramatic one.
The insensitive one.
The one who's always starting arguments.
The difficult one.
The sarcastic one.
No, sweetheart.
You didn't want the truth.
You wanted me to stroke your ego.
You wanted me to confirm the bedtime story you'd already written in your own head so you could sleep peacefully.
Because truth has one very inconvenient problem.
It doesn't always make us the hero.
Sometimes...
it puts a mirror right in front of us.
And some people would rather smash the mirror...
than face what they see staring back at them.
Part 2
I've never been very good at swallowing whatever people hand me.
Never.
And believe me, in this society that almost qualifies as a personality disorder.
I wasn't raised to keep my mouth shut.
My mother wasn't one of those women who said,
"Be quiet. The adults are talking."
Quite the opposite.
My mother made a terrible mistake.
She taught me how to read.
Most people think learning to read means putting letters together.
Not even close.
Learning to read was the beginning of every problem I've ever had.
Because reading wasn't about words.
It was about learning to doubt.
Reading a headline and asking,
"Who wrote this?"
Listening to a speech and thinking,
"What does this person really want?"
Let's be honest.
Almost everybody wants something.
Hearing someone say "I love you" and wondering,
"Is that love... fear of being alone... or are they just horny?"
You start out reading books.
Before you know it...
you're reading people.
Books can be closed.
People can't.
And that's when life gets complicated.
Because you stop listening only to what people say.
You start noticing what they don't say.
What they hide.
What they fake.
What they carefully avoid.
People speak with their mouths.
But they also speak through silence.
Through glances.
Through promises.
And, most of all...
through the promises they never keep.
Maybe that's why I was never easy to fool.
Not because I was smarter than everyone else.
Let's not get carried away.
I simply paid attention.
And paying attention...
is a dangerous habit.
You start noticing who's genuinely happy for you.
Who's clapping out of politeness.
Who's smiling because it's expected.
And who's secretly waiting for you to fail just so they can say,
"See? I knew it wasn't going to work."
My mother—the troublemaker that she was—also taught me to question things.
That was the final nail in the coffin.
Once you learn how to question the world...
you never swallow stories whole again.
Ever since I was little, I had this annoying habit of asking,
"Why?"
Such a tiny little question.
Yet it made people more uncomfortable than a well-placed insult.
Then my mother taught me something even more dangerous.
She taught me how to think.
And that's how she completely ruined me.
Because people who think...
eventually start making their own decisions.
And someone who makes their own decisions...
is a problem.
Society loves independent people...
as long as they don't become too independent.
It loves confident women...
as long as they don't become too loud.
As long as you smile...
nod your head...
and go along with everyone else...
people are perfectly comfortable.
The moment you dare to have an opinion...
the party is over.
Come to think of it...
thinking isn't the problem.
Asking questions isn't the problem.
Having opinions isn't the problem.
The real problem...
is doing any of those things without waiting for someone else's permission.
Questions are manageable.
People can dodge them.
They'll give you some meaningless answer and move on.
But an opinion...
An opinion stands up, looks everyone in the eye, and says,
"I've been thinking too."
And that...
makes people deeply uncomfortable.
Because now they're expected to think as well.
And let's face it...
thinking takes effort.
It's much easier to repeat whatever everyone else is saying.
Much easier to obey.
Much easier to stay quiet...
and later call that silence maturity instead of what it really was.
Cowardice.
I tried it too.
More than once.
I told myself,
"Yenny... stop giving your opinion."
"Stay out of it."
"Keep your mouth shut."
"You don't have to say everything you're thinking."
I honestly tried.
I swear I did.
But with my personality...
that experiment lasted about five minutes.
Pretending not to notice things requires a talent I simply don't have.
Part 3
While other little girls were playing with dolls...
I preferred listening to grown-ups talk.
Not because I was nosy.
People simply fascinated me more than toys ever could.
Dolls had nothing to hide.
Adults did.
They would say "yes," while their face screamed "no."
They'd say, "Nothing's wrong," while the silence in the room was telling an entirely different story.
That's when I developed a habit I've never been able to shake.
I learned to listen beyond words.
To watch people's expressions.
Their pauses.
The way their voice changed halfway through a sentence.
The silences that sit in the middle of a room as if they had their own Social Security number.
Sometimes a single sigh tells you more than a thirty-minute speech ever could.
I never enjoyed pretending to be somebody's mom.
I wasn't interested in serving imaginary tea to imaginary guests.
I didn't spend hours talking to dolls.
That bored me to death.
What I loved was observing.
Listening.
Thinking.
Trying to understand.
And whenever someone asked a difficult question...
that's when I came alive.
Over the years I realized that strange little girl never disappeared.
She simply grew up.
I'm still the same person.
The one who overthinks everything.
The one who asks uncomfortable questions.
The one who can't pretend not to notice what's right in front of her.
The one who would rather have an uncomfortable conversation than live inside a comfortable lie.
Some people call that a flaw.
I call it the only way I've found to stay loyal to myself.
Some people are born to fit in.
Others are born wondering why the hell the mold exists in the first place.
I obviously belong to the second group.
Funny enough...
people almost never called me a liar.
That one never really stuck.
Because even the people who got angry with me usually knew I was right.
And that was exactly the problem.
Truth doesn't make people uncomfortable because it's false.
It makes them uncomfortable because it's accurate.
Eventually I realized that thinking comes with a price.
Sometimes that price is becoming unpopular.
Losing relationships.
Feeling alone.
Discovering you no longer belong in places where you once fit perfectly.
But I also discovered something else.
Fitting in comes with an even higher price.