“Some people disappear quietly when your truth becomes too loud.” –Brianna Wiest

My Interpretation: Whitney did not scream or raise her voice at me. Did not call me names. But she made me doubt my strength. She watched me bleed & called it “normal.” She said I would never leave, because she never did. She was not inherently cruel. She was comfortable. In the chaos. In the hurt. In the lie that staying is somehow stronger than walking away.

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🧨 The Sister That Almost Was

We were supposed to make it out together.
Two moms.
Two kids.
Two lives built on broken men.

Concerts.
Daycare pickups.
Shared playlists.
Late-night texts after fights we did not have the words to explain to anyone else.

I thought I found her.
My forever friend.
The one who got it.

But instead of rising with me –
She sank.
& kept pulling me under too.

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🪞 The Mirror That Made Me Waver

She did not tell me I deserved the pain –
But she never told me I did not either.

She said,
“You will never leave him.”
& for a moment –
I believed her.

I believed her word was law.

Because she knew me.
She knew what Cade was.
She knew the way the silence cut sharp,
the way fear makes you fold in on yourself.

& she still said I would stay.

She still stayed.

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🧷 The Listener Who Held My Hurt But Never Helped Me Heal

Whitney was there in the thick of it.

Saw the bruises I did not know how to name.

Heard the pauses in my voice that held everything I could not yet voice.

She did not question it.

She never pushed.
When I broke down.
When I circled the same stories again and again.

She did not always roll her eyes.
She did not walk away.

She listened.
She held space.
She was there –

For a moment – it felt like I was not alone.
But eventually, her silence got louder than the scattered thoughts inside my head.

Until one day… she was not.
Not all at once.
Just slowly,
Quietly,
Gone.

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🚪 The Door That Never Opened All the Way

It is easy to name villains when they hurt you out loud.
Harder when they simply… disappear.
When someone sees you drowning,
& chooses not to throw the rope again.
She might say she did not know what to do.
She might have said it was not her place.

But it was.

She was in the room.
She heard the things no one else did.
& that alone might have been part of the problem.
With the work we do –
the trauma we see –
how do you justify the extra weight of someone else’s storm? 

She had her own version of Cade.
Her own bruises.
Her own reasons.

So maybe she could not save me –
Because she never saved herself.

But it still hurts.
To know she saw me drowning.
To know she was standing right beside me in the wreckage –
& still did not reach back.

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🕳 The Absence That Still Echoes

We do not talk much now.
Not because of a fight.
Not because of some grand betrayal.
But because when I needed backup –
She let go of my hand.

I thought I had a sister.
But I only had a shadow.
Someone who could have made me feel less alone –
But instead made me question my own strength.

Some days I do not blame her.
I know it is heavy to hold someone else’s truth.
Especially when it bleeds.
But I still think about how different things might have been
if she had stayed.

If she had said something twice.
If she had looked back.

Maybe I still would have walked through hell.
But maybe I would not have had to do it alone.

& that?

That is the kind of wound that whispers
what if
for years.

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📓 The Warning She Became

Now I know:
Just because someone lives in the same hell does not mean they want to leave it.
Some people build homes in the fire
& call it loyalty.

I also know that not everyone who enters your storm is willing to stay through it.
Some people want to witness the thunder –
But not the wreckage.

Whether it was survival mode, her own limitation, or just… not giving a damn – it is still on me to decide how I respond to the silence.
I still have to choose what to carry & what to let go.

She was not my villain.
But she was a lesson.
& a wound.
& a warning.

She was another mirror in my life –
A reminder that silence can be just as loud as a scream.
& sometimes?
It is the absence that haunts you more than the pain.

xoxo ♡