There’s a very specific kind of fear that shows up when things aren’t broken, but they’re not right either. You carry it around for days, weeks, months. It’s small at first. A low-volume hum. Not enough to justify any decision on its own. It never shouts, it just lingers.
So we push it down. We scroll, we work. We let it pass. And we do so because, deep down, we know getting rid of it is up to us. It doesn’t get easier with time, though—and real stress kicks in the moment we realize not asking ourselves is no longer an option. No wonder we put up the news.
We try to stay composed. Seeming kind is easy. It’s the soft voice, the half-smile, the smooth avoidance of tension. It buys us time. It buys us silence.
But being kind is different. Being kind means clarity. It means doing something that might get you hated for a while. It means leaving someone you care about because staying would mean both of you withering slowly. Kindness has teeth.
Niceness is what you reach for when you’re scared of consequences.
It’s not generosity—it’s self-protection. You sugarcoat. You withhold truth to avoid discomfort, then call it empathy. You wait for things to break on their own so you don’t have to be the one who breaks them.
But there’s nothing kind about that. Niceness wastes time. It stretches a no into months. It traps two people in a place where one already left, quietly, a long time ago. It's saying you'll stay while already scanning for the exit. Being nice can feel like love. It’s not. It’s the performance of harmony at the cost of honesty. And it’s one of the most common, invisible forms of harm.
Often takes too long to understand that protecting someone’s comfort can quietly drag them into misery. That giving someone your presence without your full self isn’t love—it’s abandonment dressed as loyalty. You think you’re being generous by staying. But all you’re doing is taking up space someone else could fill better. Someone they could laugh with. Someone who actually wants to be there.
So eventually, if you care, you leave. Not for fun. Not because you’re over it. But because staying would rot everything slowly. And because walking away now, even if it wrecks them for a while, is better than dying in front of each other over the years.
Kindness isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s blunt. Sometimes it looks like betrayal. But it's still the most sincere form of love. It doesn't mean pretending you didn't matter, nor downplaying your absence or making it easier to be forgotten. That's not closure. That's erasure.
Kindness is admitting the damage and leaving room for the grief. It is never about avoiding guilt, but about carrying it without resentment. Sometimes it feels like detachment. Sometimes it feels like losing. It's not a disaster. It's not betrayal. You just did what you had to do.