They say time heals, but I think it just teaches you how to hide the wound better. Because it's not the moment that hurts, it's everything before it. The parts of me that never healed. The child who learned to stay quiet, to make peace instead of noise, to earn love instead of expect it. I still carry them, every day, in small ways no one sees. The flinch when someone raises their voice. The fear of being too much. The need to prove I'm worth staying for. I don't talk about it. No one does. But I think a lot of us are just grown-up kids, fixing cracks with silence, pretending it doesn't hurt and still trying to heal from things we never got to say out loud.