Once We Repaired Things - Part 10 - The Photo

Some photographs stay with you because they capture joy.

Others stay with you because they cause greater humiliation and trauma. This is about one of those photos.

When this happened, I was walking into a workplace every day, that no longer felt safe. My health was deteriorating. I was exhausted, frightened and trying to hold together a life that seemed to be falling apart from every direction.

And then there was Paul.

People often assume that pain comes from endings. For me, the deepest pain came from never having had the chance to speak.

That is what I have carried all these years.

After the midnight phone call, I was frightened.

I was intimidated.

I was extremely shaken up.

I found myself walking on eggshells, carefully choosing every word, wondering how I could explain myself without making things worse. 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/07/once-we-repaired-things-part-9-midnight.html. 

That is what trauma does. You’re trying to protect yourself and keep yourself safe while, at the same time, trying to communicate and be understood.

I was already feeling like the main character in a genre I never chose: a psychological thriller. My reality had become so distorted by the level of inhumanity I was experiencing that I no longer trusted my own footing. Every interaction felt loaded. Every decision carried consequences. I was constantly trying to work out how to stay safe while simply trying to be heard.

I remember opening Messenger and staring at the screen.

How do I convey my message safely so it’s finally understood? How do I ask to speak without being attacked or humiliated again?

I wasn’t trying to win an argument. I was trying to speak. That’s all.

Every time I tried to speak, Paul brought the conversation back to the same point.

“I’m in a relationship.” “I have a girlfriend.”

I wasn’t trying to argue with Paul’s choices or tell him how to live his life.

I had unfinished things I needed to say.

I was trying to explain what had happened. I was trying to tell Paul there was so much he didn’t know. 

I was trying to have a respectful conversation.

And the reality of that text message earlier that year was this:

It was my future too.

Whatever choices Paul made about his own life were his to make.

But those choices profoundly affected mine as well, and I was left carrying the consequences without ever having been given the opportunity to speak.

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/once-we-repaired-things-text-that.html

Then came the updated profile photo. If Paul’s goal was to humiliate me even more, he succeeded. It’s too much unjustified shame and indignity to carry, especially after the painful battles I’ve had to go through in my life.

To me, in that moment, it felt like another door being slammed in my face without any humanity and compassion whatsoever. 

While I was trying to find the courage to speak, while I was carefully choosing every word because I was frightened and walking on eggshells after the midnight phone call, Paul changed his profile photo.

I was asking for the dignity of a conversation.

Instead, the photo became the moment that’s stayed with me all these years.

I cannot describe the humiliation I felt. I still live with the humiliation. What I carry in my heart now is too much pain to bear.

I remember thinking over and over:

Please let me speak.

Please ask me what happened.

Please ask me how I’m doing.

Nobody did.

Not Paul.

Not anyone.

That’s the part that’s stayed with me.

For years afterwards I’ve carried shame that wasn’t mine to carry.

I questioned myself.

I questioned my reactions.

I questioned whether I had any right to feel hurt, frightened, humiliated or overwhelmed. Or, heaven forbid, to feel angry. 

Trauma can do that. It can convince you that your own feelings somehow became unreasonable.

But let’s be honest. Societal expectations can convince you of the same thing. Where has human empathy gone?

Nice girls are STILL expected to just accept things that men do, even though they’ve crossed her boundaries. Men expect her not to show anger or fear or frustration or make reasonable requests for respectful communication. She’s expected to just accept men’s unapologetic actions and words toward her, even if it costs her everything. His feelings and future matter. Hers do not. How is that fair or authentic?

At the very same time, I was fighting institutional failures that were taking away my health, my support network, my financial security and the future I had spent decades building.

Different people.

Different circumstances.

The same overwhelming feeling.

Everybody seemed to be making decisions about my life while I stood there without a voice.

That’s why this part of my story is not only about one photograph.

The photo became a symbol of what it feels like when you’re trying, with every part of yourself, to say, “Please listen to me,” and the conversation never comes. Only shame and humiliation.

And indifference.

It became a symbol of what happens when somebody else’s decisions reshape your life, yet your own voice is never part of the conversation.

That’s why I’m writing this now.

I cannot let my own voice disappear from my own story.

Every human being has the right to dignity.

Every human being has the right to compassion.

Every human being has the right to be heard.

Every human being has the right to flourish.

No one has the right to take those things away from another human being.

For a long time, I felt as though those rights had quietly disappeared from my own life.

And then they were aggressively being taken away.

Writing this story is my way of reclaiming them, one word at a time.

Because my life matters too.

To be continued…