The Cruelty of Silence

I can only remember telling my dad I loved him twice. That does not mean love was absent. That is the part that makes it hurt in a different way. It would almost be easier if the silence meant there was nothing there. If the distance had been cold. If there had been no love underneath it. But that was not the truth. I loved my dad. I know he loved me. It just did not come out very often. Not in words. Not directly. Not in the way I understand now that people need to hear while they are still alive.

When I was a teenager, I remember thinking more than once that I needed to tell him. I knew it even then. Some part of me understood that there was something missing, something I wanted to say and should say, but I could not get it past my own fear. I was scared he would think I was weak. I do not know why I believed that. He probably would not have thought that at all. He probably would have loved to hear it. Maybe he would have been awkward. Maybe he would have said it back quickly and moved on because he did not know what else to do with that much tenderness from his son. Maybe he would have carried it quietly the way men like him often carried things. But I did not say it.

That is the cruelty of silence. It convinces people that tenderness is dangerous, when most of the time tenderness is exactly what everyone is starving for. I understand that more now than I did then. Back then, love felt like something that could be assumed. If someone knew, then maybe saying it was not necessary. If the bond was there, maybe naming it felt embarrassing or excessive. Maybe silence felt safer because it avoided the risk of being exposed. But silence does not protect love. It only hides it. And when death comes, hidden love does not feel noble. It feels unfinished.

I was talking to my mom after she read The Reflection. She had finished it earlier in the week, and a few days later we were talking about everything it brought up. She told me I was a lot like my brother. She made sure to say she did not mean the drinking or the drugs. She meant the way I think. She said he used to tell her all the time that his brain would never turn off. It just kept going constantly. When she said that, something in me went quiet.

Because I know that feeling. The constant motion. The thoughts that keep circling. The pressure behind the eyes. The sense that the mind is always working on something, even when the body is still. For years, I thought that was just me. Then my mom told me it was him too. And then she said she was glad I found a way to handle it. Unlike him.

That sentence carried more weight than she probably knew. Not because I think I am better than my brother. I am not. But because I know how close the difference can be between a mind that finds a place to put the pressure and a mind that gets buried underneath it. My brother did not make it through his. I found writing. I found training. I found my family. I found Axis. I found a way to take the constant motion and give it somewhere to go. That does not make me superior. It makes me grateful.

Then my mom told me something else. She said she was mad at my dad when he died. I had never really heard her say it that way before. She said after my brother died, my dad never got over it. He blamed himself. He slowly became more depressed. And eventually, in her view, once my sister and I were grown and out of the house, he felt like he had done his job. Like he could die at that point. Like there was nothing left he still had to stay for. She said he gave up on life. And she was angry with him for that.

I understood her anger. Not because I know exactly what happened inside my dad. I do not. No one can fully know what another person carries in the private rooms of their mind. But I understood what she meant. I understood the feeling of being left by someone who may not have chosen death directly, but stopped fighting to remain fully alive. And I told her something I had carried for a long time. I told her I still needed him.

I know I was grown. I know I was not a little boy anymore. I know he had raised me, provided for me, watched me leave home, watched me become a husband, watched me begin building an adult life. But I still needed him. I did not have my life together yet. I had not turned around yet. I was still drinking. I was still carrying my brother’s death badly. I was still moving too close to the same darkness that had already taken one of his sons.

So part of me has wondered, even now, whether things would have been different if I had turned my life around before he died. Maybe if he had seen me get sober. Maybe if he had seen me become disciplined. Maybe if he had seen the man I became later, it would have given him something. Maybe it would have helped him hold on. I know that is not fair to put on myself. But grief is not always fair. Sometimes it does not come as a clean conclusion. Sometimes it comes as a question that keeps returning even after you have answered it a hundred times. What if I had changed sooner? What if he had known I still needed him? What if I had told him I loved him more? What if I had found the courage as a teenager to say what I already knew I needed to say?

Those questions do not control me the way they might have years ago, but they still live somewhere in me. And because they live there, they have shaped the way I move now. When I see a deficit, I try to fix it. That has become one of the clearest patterns in my life. If something good is missing, I notice it. If someone deserves to be seen, I want them seen. If someone’s effort is going unnoticed, I want it named. If someone matters, I want them to know before time turns the chance into regret.

That is not about praise for its own sake. It is about witness. It is about refusing to let something meaningful disappear just because nobody took the time to say it out loud. I know what it feels like for love to be real and still remain mostly unspoken. I know what it feels like to look back and wish courage had arrived sooner. I know what it feels like to realize that someone may have needed to hear something I was too afraid to say. So now, when I see something missing, I try not to leave it missing.

I carried that same instinct into my life after sobriety. At the beginning, I was working on everything. My body. My discipline. My writing. My spirituality. My habits. My past. My mind. My archive. I was rebuilding so many pieces of myself that it felt like every part of my life was under repair. Then one day it hit me. I had been working on everything except my marriage.

Not because I did not love my wife. I loved her deeply. But love assumed is not the same thing as love expressed. I had already learned that lesson through my dad, but I had not fully applied it where it mattered most. So I started correcting it. I started giving more affection. More love. More attention. More words. More touch. More presence. Not once in a while. Every day. I wanted her to know. I wanted there to be no mystery about what she meant to me. I wanted the love to leave my body and reach her while we were both still here.

It freaked her out for a while. I understand why. When someone changes like that, especially after years of drinking, distance, shame, and inconsistency, it can feel suspicious at first. She probably wondered if it was guilt. Or a phase. Or some emotional spike that would fade once the first heat of sobriety passed. I do not blame her for that. She had lived with the old patterns long enough to know that words were not enough. So I kept showing her.

That is what love has to become after damage. Not an announcement. A practice. I think that is part of why I wrote The Reflection too. The main reason was personal healing. I needed to understand my life. I needed to face what I had done, what I had lost, what I had carried, and what I was becoming. But another reason was this: I wanted the people I love to know what they meant to me before time took any of us. Not after. Before.

I did not want my mother to have to wait for a funeral to hear what her love built in me. I did not want my sister to wonder whether I remembered the ways she shaped my childhood. I did not want my wife to have to guess what her faithfulness meant. I did not want my daughters to inherit a father who loved them deeply but left too much unsaid. I did not want the people who mattered to me to become chapters only after they were gone. I wanted the living to receive their flowers while their hands could still hold them.

That is what silence stole from me in some ways. Not love itself, but the chance to know it clearly while time was still generous. I think about my dad often. I think about how much we did not say. I think about how much we probably both felt and did not know how to express. I think about how many men walk around carrying whole oceans of love behind faces trained not to show too much. I think about how many sons want to say something but are afraid of looking weak in front of the very fathers they are trying to reach.

And I think about how tragic that is. Because most people do not need less tenderness. They need more of it. They need it plainly. Awkwardly, if necessary. Imperfectly. In short sentences. In long letters. In small gestures repeated until they become believable. They need to know they are loved before grief turns love into an inventory of missed chances.

I cannot go back and tell my dad everything I wish I had told him. That door is closed. But I can live differently because of it. I can tell my wife. I can tell my daughters. I can tell my mom. I can tell my sister. I can write the chapters. I can send the message. I can say the thing even when it feels uncomfortable. I can recognize someone’s effort when it deserves to be recognized. I can give the words. I can give the affection. I can refuse to let the missing good stay missing once I see it.

That does not fix the past. But it changes what the past is allowed to produce. I used to think strength meant being able to carry things without needing to say them. Now I think strength is being willing to say them before silence hardens around them. There is nothing weak about tenderness. There is only the fear of being seen needing it. And I am tired of letting fear decide what love gets to hear.

So if I love someone, I want them to know. If someone mattered, I want it said. If someone shaped me, I want it written down. If someone did good work, I want it recognized. If there is a deficit, I want to fix it while I still can. Because time does not wait for us to become brave. It just keeps moving. And if there is anything my life has taught me, it is this: love assumed is not enough. Love has to leave evidence.