All the Words I Never Said

In 2014, I walked away from a job most people would've killed for.

Corner office, Mercedes, executive title, polished performance reviews signed off by men in tailored suits who told me I was doing a "great job." I smiled when they said it—trained to. Conditioned to light up at approval like a lab rat in heels.

I was good at it. Too good. But I didn't know I was starving for recognition until I left the table.

That year I started building my own company—Simpatico, a tech recruitment agency—and moved from the illusion of corporate safety into something scarier: freedom.

It was around that time that I also fell in love with a man who was an absolute train wreck. Brilliant, poetic, chaotic. The kind of person who sets your world on fire just by entering a room—and leaves you sorting through the ashes long after they're gone.

We were never lovers. But I waited, every day, for the kiss I thought was inevitable. The way he looked at me. The way we laughed. I was sure—just one more day.

So when he couldn't make rent, I told him to stay at mine. For two months, I carried the weight of that fantasy on my back. He was a poet, I told myself. He just needed to be understood.

We went to a party. I didn't know he was meeting another woman there. I walked around alone, the music echoing through my body, the realisation landing heavier than the bass. He had already chosen—just not me.

A few days later, I told him I was running out of money. Which was only half true—I had some savings, but I was pouring everything into launching Simpatico. The minute he sensed the well was drying up, he left. Came back weeks later to collect his things. No apology. No acknowledgment. Just silence.

But back then, in that home, I wasn't devastated. I was awake. I had forgotten how to breathe. The poet didn't break me. He mirrored me. He showed me how deeply I still tied my worth to being needed, wanted, useful. And when the usefulness dried up, so did the illusion of love.

In 2017, I went to a San Pedro ceremony on a farm.

It was a clear, beautiful day. I took the medicine and walked out into the fields alone. I ended up sitting on a rock, and that's when it started—tears. Endless tears. That was my purge with San Pedro and Ayahuasca—no vomiting, just tears. I hadn't cried much as a child, or even as a woman. I had been too busy holding everything together.

And then… something changed.

My eyes closed and I saw it—a green, pulsing light behind my eyelids. It wasn't imagined. It was alive. The light throbbed and surged, and then something opened. My mouth. Not physically at first—but deep inside me, something began to rise. And then came the sound.

A sound I didn't know I was capable of. It wasn't a scream. It was release. A low, continuous sound that poured out of me in waves, like something that had been stuck for years was finally exiting. In my mind, my mouth stretched wider than my own face. It went on for minutes—maybe longer.

It was all the words I never said. All the things I hadn't told lovers. All the times I'd bitten my tongue in boardrooms. All the nights I lay in bed with a man who didn't ask what I wanted. All the promotions I earned quietly, without ever asking why the men around me were handed them louder.

That sound was the archive of my silence. And it was leaving.

It took years to fully let go of the need to be validated. I still catch it sometimes, trying to sneak back in—especially in this digital age where visibility masquerades as value.

But I no longer post to be seen. I speak because I have something to say. And I don't wait to be kissed anymore. I don't wait to be chosen.

There are still days I miss the woman in the office. Or the one who thought being needed was the same as being loved. But I never, ever miss the silence.

Because I found my voice. And it didn't come in a boardroom. It came on a rock, in the sun, with medicine in my blood and the sound of a lifetime rising through my throat like a storm finally allowed to break.