When The Lights Went Out…
I didn’t know I was center stage until the curtain fell.
I didn’t know it was a performance until the audience vanished.
The first time I realized everything was going to change was when I stood in the wreckage of my own life, surrounded by people who loved the story but never checked on the one who lived it.
They came for the tragedy. They whispered about the weight I was carrying but never offered to lift it. They wanted me to mourn like it was a scene to be remembered. And when the services ended, they returned to their homes… while I returned to an empty one.
I was thirty years old with two young boys. One of them asking every few minutes, “Where’s my daddy?” And all I had to give him was: Daddy died.
Diapers. Grief. Silence. Sadness. That was my stage.
That’s when it shifted. When I stopped expecting the crowd to stay. When I realized most people come to see if you’ll fall apart, but not to hold you if you do.
There are years behind these words. The exhaustion of constantly being watched, while no one truly saw me. The impossible tightrope walk between modest enough, mother enough, faithful enough… and somehow always too much. Too present. Too blonde. Too quiet. Too visible. Too unhealed to be holy, but too strong to break.
I carried both pain and purpose, and I showed up anyway. I never fit their category, their definition of what it might look like to experience things they’ve never held. I am the ONLY unmarried person in my family.. the ONLY single mother and the ONLY one who has ever suffered ALONE.
I’ve stayed quiet to protect people, not to protect myself. There’s a lot I’ve never said. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it did. I’ve held things that weren’t mine and buried truths to protect people I loved. Even after they were gone. I never wanted to climb a social ladder using secrets as rungs.
But silence can be misunderstood and sometimes your grace becomes their greenlight to rewrite your life as something unrecognizable. I never asked to be the center of anyones story. I just wanted to live one of my own. But when lies get louder than the truth and the rumors tried to rewrite my character I realized something. Keeping my silence was out of respect but I don’t owe anyone my voice. I’m done pretending that things didn’t happen.
There’s a saying people love to throw around. “You choose your hard.” Maybe? But let me tell you what I didn’t choose. I didn’t choose to become a widowed mother. TWICE. I didn’t choose the betrayal or the lies from the only father figure my children knew. I didn’t choose to give him everything I had for him to leave us penniless and still trying to feed children he said he loved. I didn’t choose to be manipulated. I didn’t choose for everyone to judge me based on lies. I didn’t choose to go through this alone. Especially when I gave so much.
But I did.. and I am. Not for pity. Not for applause. But because there’s someone out there who needs to hear the realest version of this story. Not the pretty blog, not the pinterest perfect aesthetic, but the grit and truth of what it takes to keep going when the world keeps handing you more than anyone should have to carry. So if you’re looking for 5 easy steps to build your brand or fix your life.. this probably isn’t the place. But if you’re here because you survived things you didn’t talk about, because you gave more than you ever got or you’re rebuilding from scratch and noone ever clapped for you.. then pull up a seat. Because I’m going to talk about it. All of it.
I didn’t choose my HARD (that’s what she said)lol.. But I made decisions based on the choices that I had at the time... Quietly, while everyone judged.. And sometimes I have to believe that I wasn’t meant to break, I was meant to become unshakeable.. unfuckwithable.. But I also have to believe that I was meant to shine the light on those people that were pretending to be holy instead of whole.. The only thing they were full of .. was holy shit..
Love isn’t measured in the spotlight… It’s measured in who stays when the lights go out.
AND that is something rarer than most realize.
C. Swearingen
