I didn’t overshare because I wanted to be seen. I overshared because silence was killing me faster.
I used to think oversharing was a flaw, something loose in me, a seam that never quite held. I learned the word the same way you learn the word messy or dramatic — as a warning disguised as advice. Be careful. Maybe keep some things to yourself. Not everything needs to be said. And I nodded, every time, while my body did the opposite. Because my body has never understood restraint the way language pretends to.
There was a very specific feeling to it. The moment before posting, when my chest would tighten and my fingers would move anyway. The release right after — not joy, not pride, just air. And then the echo of shame, faint but persistent, like a bruise you only notice when someone presses on it. Not because what I said was untrue. But because it existed outside of me now.
What people call oversharing was never recklessness for me. It was breathing. It was the only way I knew how to stay upright when things inside me were collapsing quietly. Silence has always been more dangerous than exposure. Silence makes everything echo inward. Writing let it out. Writing gave shape to things that would otherwise rot unnamed.
There were moments when words quite literally kept me here. When the act of articulating what I felt stopped me from folding into myself completely. When being readable was the only way I could touch the world without flinching. I didn’t need applause. I didn’t need agreement. I needed witnesses.
Not the loud ones. Not the ones who demanded clarity or neat arcs or explanations. The quiet ones. The ones who never told me to calm down. The ones who stayed without announcing themselves. They know who they are. They always do.
Later, platforms taught me to be ashamed retroactively. Things that once felt honest were suddenly reframed as careless, excessive, too much. Context collapsed. Softness became suspicious. Vulnerability was fine only when it behaved. I learned how quickly the same openness that drew people in could be used to push me out.
And still — I survived it.
That’s the part I don’t say often enough. I should have known better. I should have protected myself more. Maybe. But I also know this: the version of me who shared too much did not abandon herself. She chose expression over disappearance. She chose language over numbness. She trusted that being real was worth the risk, even when it wasn’t rewarded.
Sometimes I want to go back and put my hands on her shoulders. Tell her she wasn’t naïve. She was alive. She didn’t overshare because she lacked boundaries. She overshared because she was building them in real time, with bare hands, in public.
I don’t regret being readable when I was breaking. I don’t regret letting my insides touch daylight. I don’t regret surviving loudly.
If anything, I regret the moments I tried to harden, to withhold, to perform restraint like maturity. That was never who I was. This is not a brand. This is a nervous system. And it learned how to speak by refusing to stay quiet.
I’m still here. Still writing. Still choosing words over disappearance.
And I’m not sorry.