Silence

CHAPTER ONE - Belonging and Burden

There were times when Kahlia would thank me three or four times for something small, picking her up, making dinner, sitting beside her while she tried to breathe through another unbearable hour. She’d say, “I appreciate you,” with a softness that didn’t belong to someone her age. It wasn’t the casual gratitude of a twenty-four-year-old. It was older, heavier.

Like she was trying to apologise for existing.

She never said she felt like a burden. Children rarely do, but I could feel her believing it.

It was in the way she apologised before asking for help, as if requesting comfort came with a bill. In the way she pulled back the moment life got hard, trying to make herself small enough that no one would notice her hurting. In the way she hid the sharpest parts of her struggle, not because she wanted secrecy, but because she didn’t want to frighten anyone she loved.
In the way she tried to be good, easy, light, even as something inside her was collapsing.

I didn’t recognise it at the time.
That kind of gratitude looks beautiful on the surface. Polite, sweet, mature, even. But underneath, it carries a different truth. It is the gratitude of someone who thinks they have to earn their place. Of someone who believes care is conditional. Of someone terrified that love has a limit, and they are getting close to crossing it.

She was thanking me for staying. For tolerating the parts she tried to hide. For not being overwhelmed by the heaviness she carried inside her chest like a secret she never asked for.
She was thanking me for loving her because she didn’t believe she deserved it.

It was as if every act of care came at a cost, and she wanted to pay it upfront, in case she ran out of chances.

She wasn’t always like this.
When she was younger, belonging came naturally. She walked into rooms as if the world expected her. She was affectionate, curious, wickedly funny. She let herself be loved without flinching. She had a place, and she didn’t question it. But as she grew older, and as her mental health frayed, something shifted. Slowly at first, then all at once.

Her sense of belonging loosened, thread by thread. Not gone, but unstable, not broken, but unsure.

When belonging begins to fray, burden-belief slips quietly into the gap.

People imagine feeling like a burden as a dramatic thought, a shouted confession, a clear cry for help.
It isn’t.
It is quiet.
It is subtle.
It is the sound of someone clearing their throat instead of asking for what they need.
It is the soft apology in every sentence.
It is the way they shrink after hard moments, hoping their smallness will protect everyone else.

It grows in the spaces where a person begins to believe they take up too much room, too much time, too much worry, too much of everything.

For Kahlia, it looked like:

• shrinking after difficult conversations
• retreating from connection the moment she sensed she was too much
• speaking softly when she was in pain, as if loudness itself might burden someone
• apologising for crying
• apologising for not crying
• apologising for things no one else noticed

After each attempt, she became even smaller; a little quieter. More careful with her words, her needs, her presence.

She pulled back not because she didn’t want us, but because she didn’t want to scare us.
Not because she didn’t care, but because she cared too much. Not because she wished to be alone, but because she believed her pain didn’t belong anywhere.

Distress made her want to disappear. Concern made her feel guilty. Love made her feel like she was taking something she hadn’t earned.

Here is what people don’t understand about suicide:
It isn’t the absence of love.
It is the unbearable belief that your existence is harming the people you love most.

Belonging is our first safety.
Before language, before memory, before anything else, the nervous system seeks connection to know the world is survivable.

When belonging breaks, or when a person starts to believe they no longer deserve it, the entire internal landscape tilts.

We think suicide is a rejection of life.
But often, it is a misdirected act of devotion. A desperate attempt to relieve the ones they love. A belief, distorted, heartbreaking, and untrue, that the world would hurt less without them.

The burden-belief does not appear fully formed.

It accumulates.

It settles where shame has softened the ground.
It whispers that sadness is contagious.
It convinces someone they have failed at being easy to love.
It tells them they drain the people around them.
It tells them the most loving thing they can do is remove themselves.

Shame is the accelerant.
Shame tells a person they should be coping better.
Shame turns their pain into a character flaw.
Shame makes them feel responsible for everyone’s emotional weather.
Shame tells them their tears are a burden.
Shame tells them their silence is a burden.
Shame tells them they are the burden.

And when shame and burden-belief join hands, a person stops asking for the belonging that could save them.

People say, “But she knew she was loved,” as if love can override a collapsing nervous system. As if knowing something rationally can undo the storm happening in the body.

Understanding love is logical. Surviving pain is not.

THE NECESSITY OF BELONGING

If we stripped everything else away, culture, history, personality, achievement, opinion, one truth would remain.

Humans are built to belong to each other.

Belonging isn’t optional, or decorative, or something nice to have when life is going well.
It is the foundation of our survival.

Our brains were shaped in tribes, not in isolation.

Connection is the nervous system’s first safety signal, the thing that tells the body,
You are not alone. You are part of something. You are safe enough to stay alive.

When belonging feels threatened, even slightly, the brain reacts as if the entire world has tilted.

Loneliness, rejection, or even the perception of disconnection registers as danger.
Not symbolically.
Not emotionally.
Biologically.

MRI studies show that social pain, exclusion, loneliness, feeling unwanted, lights up the same neural regions as physical pain. The brain does not distinguish between a broken bone and a broken connection. And yet, when someone dies by suicide, people rush to ask,
Didn’t they know they were loved,
Didn’t the family do enough,
How could they feel alone with so many people around them,

As if belonging were a group project. As if love could be measured by volume. As if proximity and belonging were the same thing.

One of the most painful, inaccurate assumptions we carry about suicide is this:
if someone felt disconnected, the family must have failed.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Belonging is not measured by how many people love you.
Belonging is measured by how much of that love you believe you are allowed to keep.

A person can be loved fiercely and still feel like they are standing outside their own life.
Not because their family didn’t show up, but because their pain convinced them they no longer belonged in the spaces they once inhabited effortlessly.

Belonging is felt from the inside.
Love is seen from the outside.
Suicide lives in the canyon between the two.

When someone stops believing they belong, the risk is not that they will stop loving others.
The risk is that they will stop believing others could love them without being hurt by it.

HOW BURDEN-BELIEF FORMS

The belief of being a burden doesn’t arrive with a dramatic announcement.
It seeps in.
It accumulates, like silt in the bloodstream, so slowly that by the time you feel it, it already feels like it has always been there.

It begins with small moments:

• Feeling like you’ve cried too many times this week
• Asking for help again when you promised yourself you would cope better
• Watching someone’s expression tighten when you say you’re not okay
• Hearing a sigh and assuming it is about you
• Sitting in a waiting room, wondering what someone cancelled to be there
• Seeing messages pile up and feeling guilty for being the difficult friend
• Surviving an attempt and seeing the fear in someone’s eyes
• Watching life go on around you while thinking, I am slowing everyone down

No single moment is the cause. But together, they form a story. A quiet story that settles under the skin.

I am hard work.
Everyone would be less tired if I wasn’t like this.
People have to recover from me.

A person doesn’t wake up and think, I am a burden. They slowly begin to feel that their existence places weight on others, weight they never meant anyone to carry.

They hold back the full truth because they have seen what the full truth does to the room.
They downplay their pain because when they showed it honestly, everyone panicked.
They say, “I’m fine,” because the last time they weren’t fine, life turned upside down.

This is where shame slides in.

Shame is not, I did something wrong.
Shame is, I am wrong.

Shame tells them they should be quieter, easier, stronger, less emotional, less dramatic, less everything.
It takes normal human distress and repackages it as personal failure.

So they apologise.
For crying, for not crying, for ruining the mood, for being tired, for being scared, for being too much, for not being enough.
They apologise for existing in any state other than cheerful and self-sufficient.

Shame makes them withdraw before anyone has the chance to turn away.

And from the outside, this looks like independence.
Maturity.
Selflessness.

But on the inside, it feels like, I am easier to love when I need less.

This is why so many people hide their pain.
Not laziness.
Not secrecy.
Not manipulation.
Shame.

They don’t want to be the problem.
They don’t want to scare anyone again.
They don’t want to cause another crisis that leaves everyone trembling.

By the time someone is seriously thinking of ending their life, the burden-belief feels like a fact, not a fear.

It doesn’t sound like, Maybe I am a burden.
It sounds like, Everyone will be better if I disappear.

It is not selfishness.
It is self-erasure.
A quiet conclusion reached under unbearable pressure.

THE INTERNAL EXPERIENCE OF BURDEN

People imagine burden-belief as a sentence someone thinks.
It isn’t.
It is a state of being, a lens over everything, a heaviness that enters every moment.

It sounds like:

• If they knew the whole truth about me, it would break them
• I shouldn’t keep needing this much help
• I am hurting the people I love just by being alive
• Everyone is tired, I am adding to it
• They would finally breathe if I wasn’t here

These aren’t dramatic thoughts. They are distorted perceptions created by a brain overwhelmed by emotional pain. Logic frays, perspective narrows. The nervous system stays on high alert, even in safe rooms.
Every sigh feels like blame.
Every pause feels like disappointment.
Every kind gesture feels undeserved.

Burden-belief begins in the body before it reaches language. It feels like a tightening in the throat when asking for help,
a sinking in the stomach when someone looks worried,
a heat rising in the face after crying,
a subtle flinch when someone reaches out,
a constant internal audit: Am I too much,

Pain becomes the storyteller.
Shame becomes the editor.
Fear becomes the script.

And the person caught inside begins to believe they are the harm.

In that world, death stops looking like escape and starts looking like mercy.

Not for themselves, but for the people they love.

This is the tragedy no one sees until it is too late. They are not choosing death.
They believe they are choosing to stop hurting the people they love most.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT

The suicidal mind is not cruel. It is not trying to punish anyone. It is not choosing death over love. It is responding to unbearable emotional pain with the only logic the overwhelmed brain can access.

When someone believes they are a burden, the brain shifts into biological crisis. Not emotional weakness, not lack of resilience. Biology.

Here is what is happening:

1. The brain’s threat system activates
The amygdala fires as if danger is immediate.
The body floods with cortisol and adrenaline.
Everything feels overwhelming.

2. The nervous system moves into survival mode
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, shutdown.
None of them relieve the pain.

3. Cognitive flexibility decreases
The capacity to reason or imagine alternatives collapses.

4. The ability to hold two truths disappears
A healthy brain can think, I am struggling, and, I still matter.
A distressed brain can only hold one, and it is always the darkest one.

5. Perspective narrows
The world becomes a tunnel, then a pinhole, then a wall.

6. Hopelessness feels factual, not emotional
Not a feeling.
A perceived truth.

7. The capacity to imagine a future dissolves
Neurologically, not metaphorically.

Without a future, the brain searches only for immediate relief. Suicide appears not as a desire for death, but as a way to stop the pain.

This is cognitive constriction. When pain becomes too intense, the brain cannot see alternatives.

In that state, the belief
They would be better without me
doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels true.

The tragedy is that it is always a lie, but in that moment, the brain cannot recognise it as one.

Suicide is not chosen in a moment of freedom. It is chosen in a moment of collapse.

ISOLATION: WHERE BURDEN TAKES ROOT

After each attempt, Kahlia pulled back. Not because she didn’t want support, not because she didn’t care and not because she wanted to be alone.

She pulled back because she felt ashamed, exposed, guilty for frightening us, frightened for herself, overwhelmed by how fragile everything felt, and convinced she had created chaos she did not know how to repair.

She pulled back because she thought her pain was inconvenient, and because she thought protecting us meant disappearing. But here is the part no one likes to say out loud.

People pulled back from her too.

Not with cruelty, or intention, or malice. But because being close to someone who is drowning takes a toll, and not everyone knows how to stay in the water.

Some of her friends didn’t know what to say. Some felt helpless. Some cared deeply but felt out of their depth. Some feared that being close to her pain might pull up their own.

So they softened their words. Made shorter visits. Took a half step back, even as they promised they were there. And someone in Kahlia’s state notices every step.

When someone is already convinced they are too much, every quiet shift in someone else becomes proof.

I am exhausting people.
I am difficult to be around.
I am scaring them.
They are better when I am quiet.

This is the trick isolation plays. The more a person needs connection, the more they withdraw. The more they withdraw, the more others withdraw too.
It becomes a feedback loop, self-protection on all sides.

Kahlia isolated to protect us.
People stepped back to protect themselves.
And she interpreted their distance as confirmation that she did not belong.

Not because love disappeared. But because fear entered the room.

Once someone has lived through multiple crises, their own presence begins to feel volatile.
They worry that honesty will overwhelm people.
They worry that tears will disappoint people.
They worry that struggle will ruin things.
So they make themselves small.

Silence feels safer than failing again.

This is where burden-belief grows fastest, in the quiet after crisis,
when everyone is trying, but no one knows how to reach each other.

It does not grow because someone stops loving.
It grows because someone starts believing their pain is too much for anyone to hold.

A person who feels they do not belong will stop reaching. Stop asking. Stop showing the truth. Stop believing there is space for them here.

Isolation gives burden-belief teeth. And once it bites, it becomes almost impossible to convince someone they matter.

INTEGRATION: A DIFFERENT WAY TO HOLD THE STORY

Here is the truth most of us needed long before we ever needed it.

Feeling like a burden is not a reflection of someone’s worth.
It is a symptom of their suffering.

It is not a moral failing. Not a flaw. Not weakness or ingratitude.
It is what happens when pain becomes louder than self-worth, and when the nervous system can no longer hold hope. Their belief did not come from your failures.
It came from their pain, pain that narrowed their world to a pinhole, pain that convinced them their absence would be an act of love.

You were never supposed to be the burden-reliever they imagined.
You did not fail to say the right thing.
You did not fail to love them strongly enough.
You did not fail to notice something everyone else saw.

You were the person they loved so deeply
they didn’t want to keep hurting you.

They weren’t trying to escape you.
They were trying to spare you.

Twisted, tragic, unbearable, yes.
But it came from love, not the absence of it.

If you carry anything from this chapter, let it be this.

What they believed about themselves was not the truth. It was the injury. And injuries lie.

Injuries tell people they are unlovable. Too much. Breaking the ones they care about. Running out of chances. Beyond help.

Injuries can make even the brightest mind forget its own belonging.

Their death was not a statement about your love, or your effort, or your worth.

It was the consequence of a mind that could no longer recognise itself as needed,
wanted, or safe to keep.

This is not closure. There is no closure for a loss like this. But it is the first crack in the silence, the silence that tells families they failed, the silence that tells survivors to hide,
the silence that tells the world not to look too closely at the truth.

Understanding this will not erase the pain. But it softens the blame. It gives shape to the shapeless. It invites compassion into the places where guilt has been sitting like stone.

This chapter asks you to set down the parts that were never yours.
To loosen the grip of self-blame.
To understand the difference between the person and the injury.

They were not leaving you.
They were leaving the pain.

And if we start here, with truth instead of shame, with understanding instead of silence,
then maybe fewer families will stand where you stand now.

A world where belonging is protected.
Where burden-belief is recognised early.
Where pain does not get the final say.

This is where the work begins.