There’s no easy way to explain certain types of pain—the kind that doesn’t just hurt, but swallows you whole. “It felt like my organs were being crushed” is the only way I could describe it at the time. Not poetic, not clinical—just brutally real.
It wasn’t a car crash or a fall or some external injury. It was internal. A pressure that began somewhere behind my ribs and radiated outward, like my body was caving in from the inside. I couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t even cry the way I wanted to, because my lungs didn’t seem to have the space.
Anxiety? Maybe. A panic attack? Possibly. Grief? Almost definitely.
There’s a specific kind of grief that doesn’t scream—it compresses. It tightens around your heart, your stomach, your lungs. It doesn’t ask permission. It just arrives, sometimes triggered by a sentence, a memory, or a silence too loud to ignore. And when it does, it doesn’t just affect your mind—it takes hold of your entire body.
I remember pacing. I remember trying to drink water, as if hydration could wash away the feeling. I remember clutching at my chest like something was actually physically wrong. I even remember wondering if this was what a heart attack felt like.
But I wasn’t dying. I was just breaking.
What they don’t always tell you about emotional pain is that it is physical. The body holds sorrow the way it holds stress or fear—in muscles, in organs, in the silent, invisible corners of the self. And when it builds up long enough, it demands to be felt.
Writing this isn’t a cure, but it’s a release. A way to honor what my body was telling me when words weren’t enough. If you’ve ever felt something similar—like you were collapsing under a weight no one could see—I want you to know: you’re not weak. You’re not alone. You’re just human.
And being human means carrying things that sometimes feel too heavy. But it also means surviving them.
