To the One Who Still Nods,
You nod so easily now.
In meetings.
In conversations.
At ideas that don’t belong to you but live in your mouth anyway.
You weren’t always like this.
Do you remember when your face used to hesitate before agreeing?
That half-second pause where something inside you checked if the words were true?
They trained that out of you.
Not with force.
With comfort.
They gave you phrases that sounded safe.
Opinions pre-approved.
Disagreements that went nowhere.
And you learned the most important skill of all:
How to nod without listening.
That was the first disappearance.
Not when you changed jobs.
Not when you moved cities.
But when you stopped interrupting lies with questions.
You tell people you’re “just being practical now.”
That this is how adults survive.
But I remember you.
I remember when your thoughts were sharp and inconvenient.
When you ruined dinners by asking why.
When silence felt heavier than being wrong.
You don’t remember the moment it happened.
That’s intentional.
It was gradual.
A trade.
They didn’t steal your voice.
They leased it.
In exchange, they gave you certainty.
A script.
A sense of belonging that didn’t require honesty — only repetition.
Every nod became a small burial.
You buried doubts.
You buried instincts.
You buried the version of yourself that noticed patterns too early.
Sometimes, late at night, you feel it.
That tightness behind the eyes.
That strange exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch.
That’s not tiredness.
That’s unspoken disagreement piling up.
There’s a reason you flinch when someone speaks plainly now.
Truth feels aggressive to people trained in agreement.
You might be wondering why you’re reading this.
You weren’t supposed to.
This message was meant for the version of you that still pauses.
The one who feels the urge to say, “That doesn’t make sense,”
but swallows it to keep the room calm.
They rely on that.
Calm rooms.
Quiet minds.
Nodding heads.
If you’re looking for instructions, there are none.
This isn’t a call to rebel.
It’s a reminder.
Before the nod, there was a thought.
Before the thought, there was a self.
Ask yourself — honestly, without answering out loud:
When was the last time you disagreed and stayed present?
Don’t react.
Don’t announce.
Just notice.
That’s how it starts again.
— A voice you used to recognize
