Sometimes it’s not that I want to die—it’s that I can’t function while wishing I wasn’t here. My suicidal thoughts have been running in the background like a virus, quietly crashing my ability to handle school, responsibilities, or life. I’m not lazy. I’m exhausted from the war in my head.

This isn’t about wanting to die. It’s about wanting control in a world that’s tried to take it from me too many times. These thoughts don’t come from weakness—they come from fear, rage, and the deep knowing that if anything ever happened to me, I’d want to be the one who decided how it ended. Not him. Not the system. Me.

They said rage made me difficult. But I’ve learned it made me dangerous—to the silence, to the shame, to the systems that thrive when we stay quiet. This piece is about the fire behind my fight, and how anger shaped me into someone who refuses to stay small.

Being emotionally intelligent is a gift—but it comes with a cost. When you understand everything, you feel everything. And after a while, it stops feeling like wisdom and starts feeling like exhaustion. This is for the people who always make room for others, who analyze everything, who see the deeper meaning behind every action—and still feel alone.

I don’t feel safe when men flirt with me. I don’t feel safe walking home alone. I don’t feel safe existing in a body that men think belongs to them. And the truth is, sometimes I don’t feel like living—not because I want to die, but because I’m terrified someone else will take that choice from me. This piece is rage. It’s fear. It’s survival. It’s me, unfiltered.

— Trinity Barnette

I didn’t grow up hearing about domestic violence—I grew up watching it. I saw it in black eyes and slammed doors. I felt it in the silence that followed every explosion. This isn’t just my story—it’s my origin. The reason I became an activist. The reason I write, speak, and refuse to stay quiet. Because I know what it’s like to be the kid in the room, and I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting so others don’t have to grow up in fear like I did.

He told me I was weak for crying. For feeling too much. For being sensitive. But what I’ve learned is this — my emotions weren’t the problem. His inability to face them was. My sensitivity didn’t make me fragile. It made me human.

I want closeness. I want to be known. But the second someone gets too close, I pull away. It’s not because I don’t care—it’s because caring terrifies me. This is what it’s like to crave connection while constantly preparing for the worst.

For years, I thought I was just “too much.” Too emotional. Too reactive. Too intense. Then I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder—and suddenly, things started to make sense. This is what it’s really like to live with BPD, and why it doesn’t define me, but it’s part of my story.

I was told to stop crying before I got something to cry about. I was punished like a soldier, humiliated in public, and made to believe it was for my own good. But it wasn’t discipline. It wasn’t love. It was abuse—and this is the truth I was never allowed to say.

When I was younger, I thought I was just a “mature kid” talking to older guys online. I thought I was in control. I didn’t realize that what I was experiencing had a name—or that it would stay with me for years. This is the truth I couldn’t see back then, and the story I’m finally ready to tell now.