The Lie of “She’s So Strong”

People call me strong.

I think what they mean is: I am composed.

I’m capable, measured, and I’m self-regulating.

They mean I have a structure, one that isn’t compromised.

It sounds like admiration. And sometimes it often is.

But what I feel it is, is a comfort.

Comfort that I am not collapsing or spilling on them.

Comfort that they are not required to stretch inside themselves.

Comfort that my pain is self-managed, and not engulfing.

And comfort that I speak with an amount of ease.

There is privilege in being allowed to experience me only in my regulated form.

There is privilege in never having to see the shaking hands.

The tight chest. Or the tears streaming down my face.

The privilege of not seeing the moment my body tips and I steady it alone.

Facing my own reflection, and saying “I can do this”.

Because I rarely make people hold onto that version of me.

I recover pretty quietly.

I process before I become present.

I cry where no one hears it.

I recalibrate before I re-enter the room.

Because my weakness rarely has a witness.

So they experience strength.

They experience competence.

They experience stability.

What they do not experience is the cost.

Strength, in my life, has been a calculated internal system.

It’s tracking.

It’s anticipating.

It’s correcting.

It’s regulating.

I learned to speak about survival as if it is administrative.

But that’s the performance.

What the audience doesn’t see is the breaking down that happens privately.

Behind closed doors.

In bathrooms.

In cars.

Or below deck on my ship when the adrenaline drains.

It looks like shaking hands.

And tight lungs.

Hot tears that come fast and disappear faster.

It looks like pressing my palms into my eyes and breathing until my body recalibrates.

I have learned how to fall apart efficiently.

That is the part no one praises.

Because no one sees it.

When you break privately, the world experiences you as unbreakable.

And over time, that perception becomes an expectation.

She can handle it.

She always does.

Yes.

I do.

But that does not mean I should have to.

There is a quiet imbalance in being the person who rarely destabilizes others.

It creates the illusion that you are less fragile than you are.

It creates the expectation that your capacity is endless.

My composure has protected other people from the weight of me.

But it has also protected me from something else.

Disappointment.

When I break down privately, I control the narrative.

I control the timing.

I control who sees me destabilized.

I control who sees me crumple

And I control the re-entry.

No one gets to mishandle me.

No one gets to freeze.

No one gets to fail the moment.

Because I do not offer it.

Strength has not only been resilience.

It has been my strategy.

If I steady myself before anyone notices, I never find out who would have steadied me.

If I do not fully lean, I do not fully test.

And within taught myself I don’t need others “regulating me”.

There is safety in that.

Control eliminates variables.

And I am very good at eliminating variables.

People experience me as strong because they experience the highly edited version of myself.

They experience the recalibrated pulse.

The measured tone, and the thought-through response.

They do not experience the spike.

The internal tremors.

The private unraveling.

That is not an accident.

It is a choice.

There is a cost to that level of control.

It creates distance.

It prevents certain kinds of intimacy.

It keeps me self-contained.

But it also preserves my self-respect.

I am strong.

Not because I never break.

But because I decide where the breaking is witnessed.

If someone wants access to more than the composed version of me, but the compromised one. They will have to prove they can hold it.

Until then, I will continue choosing control.

Yours Truly,

-Kate

Xo