Shadows of difference: 5. Silent Voices
This is my story. The figure you see, broken and fragmented, is me—not just in pieces, but consumed by a silence I was forced into for too long. My mouth sealed shut, not by my own doing, but by the world around me that demanded I stay quiet, invisible. For years, I lived in a constant state of being unheard, of having my voice muted before it could even be heard.
The silence wasn’t peaceful. It was suffocating. It was a painful, internal scream that never made it past my lips. The world shaped me into what it needed me to be, ignoring the person I was, until I broke. Every fragment of me in this image is a reflection of those years of suppression. The sharp, jagged lines are the wounds that were carved into me by the expectations, the judgments, the cruelty of a world that didn’t care to listen.
I was taught to stay silent. I was told that my thoughts weren’t worth sharing, that my pain didn’t matter. I lived in the shadows, not because I chose to, but because the world pushed me there. I was made to feel like I was nothing more than a broken figure, a person who didn’t deserve to speak. But now, I’m angry. Angry at all the years I spent silenced, angry at the voices that told me I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t worth hearing.
Do you think you could treat me the way you liked, and nothing would happen? Do you think I would just stay quiet forever? Not anymore.
The darkness surrounding me is not just isolation; it’s the emptiness of being invisible, the weight of being unheard. It’s the rage I carry now, remembering every moment I was told to stay quiet, every time I was shut down before I could even speak. I’m still fighting to be seen, but I’m no longer silent. The light that barely cuts through the darkness now represents the anger I’ve finally found—the anger that was buried under years of being muted.
This is me reclaiming my voice, my right to exist beyond the silence they forced on me. This silence is disturbing. It’s the pain that no one could see, the hurt that couldn’t be shared, and now, it’s my anger that fills the space. I am not broken. I am not the fragments they tried to make me. I am the voice that refuses to be silent any longer.
