Inspired by “The Voice Beneath the Skin” by Besmira Stermilli
There is a kind of exhaustion that does not come from doing too much, but from pretending everything is okay when it is not. It lives in the small, repeated moments where we say “it’s fine” just to keep things moving, just to avoid conflict, just to stay liked. In The Voice Beneath the Skin by Besmira Stermilli, this quiet self-betrayal is not shown as weakness, but as something we have been taught, something that slowly distances us from our own truth.
Saying “it’s fine” becomes a reflex long before we realize what it is costing us. It slips out when someone crosses a boundary, when something hurts, when something feels off but we cannot quite explain why. We say it to smooth things over, to avoid being seen as difficult, to protect relationships we are afraid to lose. And for a while, it works. The moment passes. The room stays calm. Nothing breaks on the outside.
But something begins to tighten on the inside.
The body notices what the mouth tries to dismiss. There is a heaviness that lingers, a tension that does not quite leave, a quiet discomfort that follows us long after the conversation is over. It is not dramatic. It does not demand attention right away. But it stays, building slowly, like something waiting to be acknowledged.
The problem is not the phrase itself. It is what it replaces. Every “it’s fine” covers a truth we did not speak. A boundary we did not hold. A feeling we did not allow ourselves to feel. Over time, those unspoken moments do not disappear, they gather. They shape how we show up, how we relate to others, how we understand ourselves.
We start becoming someone who tolerates more than we should. Someone who adjusts, accommodates, absorbs. Someone who begins to feel invisible in spaces where we are physically present. And the hardest part is, we often do not realize when the shift happened. We just know that something feels off.
In Stermilli’s writing, there is a quiet but powerful reminder that the body does not forget these moments. It carries them, in the tightness of the chest, the ache in the gut, the fatigue that does not go away with rest. These are not random sensations. They are responses. They are the body’s way of saying, “this mattered,” even when we tried to convince ourselves it did not.
So what happens when you finally stop saying “it’s fine”?
At first, it feels uncomfortable. There is a pause where the automatic response used to be. There is uncertainty, even fear, what if speaking the truth changes things? What if it creates tension? What if people do not respond the way you hoped?
But alongside that discomfort, something else begins to surface. A sense of clarity. A steadiness. A feeling of being present in your own life in a way you have not been for a long time.
You begin to notice what you actually feel, not what you think you should feel. You start responding instead of reacting. You allow yourself to say, “this does not sit right with me,” or “I need something different,” or even just, “I am not okay.” And in those moments, something shifts, not just in your relationships, but in your relationship with yourself.
Not everyone will understand. Some people may be used to the version of you that stayed quiet, that adjusted, that did not ask for more. But the people who matter, the ones who are able to meet you honestly, will begin to see you more clearly.
And more importantly, you begin to see yourself.
Stopping “it’s fine” does not mean everything becomes easy. It means everything becomes real. It means choosing honesty over comfort, even in small ways. It means trusting that your experience is valid, even if it disrupts the surface of things.
Because the truth is, things were never really fine. They were just unspoken.
And when you finally allow yourself to speak, you are not creating problems, you are ending the quiet ones that have been living inside you all along.