The Quiet Exhaustion No One Sees

There are emotions that scream.

And then there are emotions that go silent.

Lately, mine have gone quiet.

Ryan and I have been through hell and back over the past two and a half years — the kind of hell you don’t come back from unchanged. The kind that strips you down to survival mode and leaves you standing there wondering when you stopped feeling so much… and why that now feels like relief.

He relapsed.
And while the world loves a clean, simple explanation for relapse, the truth is messier. His reasons are tangled in trauma, in a past that never loosened its grip, in wounds that existed long before I ever entered his life. Addiction didn’t start with me, and it didn’t end because of love — no matter how much we wish it worked that way.

As for me?
I learned about a world I only thought existed on television.

Drugs. Addiction. Street life. Prison culture. Relapse cycles. Withdrawal. Chaos disguised as normal. Survival disguised as strength. I didn’t grow up in this world. I didn’t study it in a textbook. I lived it — unexpectedly, unwillingly, and deeply.

One day, when all of this is over, I will write the book.
The full story.
The raw truth.
The parts I keep locked away right now because some things aren’t meant to be explained while you’re still bleeding from them.

For now, I share the minimum. Not because the pain isn’t real — but because some pain is sacred, and some pain is still actively happening.

What I can say is this:

I am numb.
I am cold.
I am exhausted in a way sleep does not fix.

I am tired of the drama.
Tired of the chaos.
Tired of the prison world and everything that comes with living through a bid with the person you love.

Being a prison wife is not just hard — it’s brutal.
It is more than taxing.
More than painful.

It is a hell I cannot fully explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it.

It is loving someone through steel doors and recorded phone calls.
It is learning to smile while carrying fear you don’t speak out loud.
It is being strong so often that weakness feels foreign.
It is holding your breath through lockdowns, violations, rumors, and silence.
It is waking up every day and choosing endurance — not because you’re fearless, but because walking away was never an option.

People see loyalty and think it’s romantic.
They don’t see the cost.

Right now, I’m not dramatic. I’m not hysterical. I’m not falling apart.

I’m something quieter than that.

I’m tired.

And maybe that’s what survival looks like in this season — not screaming, not explaining, not defending… just standing still long enough to catch your breath in a world that never stops demanding more from you.

If you don’t understand this life, that’s okay.
I wouldn’t wish understanding it on anyone.

But if you do — if you’ve lived it — then you already know.

And maybe, just maybe, you’re tired too.