The Violence of Being Everything

There comes a moment when your name is spoken in rooms you no longer enter, when people refer to you with reverence, but their praise lands like an echo – hollow, disconnected from the truth of your inner life. That moment reveals something unsettling: the version of you that others admire might not be the version that truly exists. It might be the one that has carefully disappeared inside their needs, their narratives, their expectations. And you, quietly watching this performance, begin to realize that you have not been loved for who you are, but for what you do. This is not connection. This is not success. This is the violence of being everything.

It’s a quiet violence, not the kind that crashes or cuts, but one that settles in like fog and never leaves. It speaks in the language of competence. It thrives in the disguise of leadership. It wears the mask of usefulness and productivity. But beneath all of it, there is a deep, subtle erosion of self. The world claps for the one who shows up, who holds it all together, who doesn’t flinch when others fall apart. But what they don’t see, what you barely have time to notice, is that showing up in this way has cost you your ability to locate yourself. The applause has been a lullaby, keeping you asleep to your own depletion.

You don’t remember when it started. Maybe it was the first time someone told you that you were mature for your age, or gifted, or reliable. Maybe it was when you learned that being needed meant being wanted, and that to stay wanted you had to keep giving. So you became more than dependable, you became indispensable. You learned to solve problems before they were spoken, to manage emotions that weren’t yours, to read rooms faster than you could read your own heartbeat. And that became your identity. Not a choice, but a response to a world that only seems to value people once they lose themselves for others.

In Morocco, this narrative becomes even more complicated. To lead in this culture is to perform permanence. The leader is the one who never breaks, who always arrives, who sacrifices without asking why. You are not encouraged to be honest about your weariness. You are not allowed to ask for care. You become a symbol, a resource, a scaffold for others to build their comfort on. And with each expectation placed on you, another piece of your own softness is shelved, postponed, or exiled. And still, they call it noble.

They call it passion, they call it purpose, but what is passion when it’s drenched in exhaustion? What is purpose when it robs you of presence? What is leadership when it teaches you to abandon yourself in order to be celebrated? These are questions that surface only when the noise fades, when you’re alone enough to hear your own silence. And in that silence, something starts to ache. Not the kind of ache that demands fixing, but the one that reveals what’s been broken for too long.

You begin to wonder if anyone ever truly sees you. Not the version of you that handles everything, not the one who “always finds a way,” not the brand, not the voice, but the person who sometimes has nothing left to give. The one who wants to rest without guilt. The one who wants to feel held, not managed. But who holds you? Who creates space for your complexity, your vulnerability, your collapse? The answer is uncomfortable: most of the time, no one. And when no one does, you learn to hold yourself in silence, in shadows, with rituals no one else sees, rituals that are not always gentle, but necessary for survival.

You perform strength long enough and it starts to feel like solitude. You wear resilience like armor, until even love bounces off. You internalize the idea that value comes from being unshakeable. And yet, you’re tired. Not from doing too much, but from being too much for too long.

Maybe healing doesn’t begin with stepping back into the light. Maybe it begins with recognizing the ways you’ve been misnamed, mistaken, misused , disapointements and still kept going. Maybe the most revolutionary thing you can do is to say no. To rest. To disappear from the stage. Not out of bitterness, but as a quiet act of remembering. That you are not here to carry everyone. That you are not here to be magnificent and empty at the same time. That you are not here to slowly vanish in the name of being valuable.

Let the world learn to live without your constant availability. Let the applause fade. Let the image unravel. Because when you return if you return  it won’t be to perform. It will be to finally inhabit your own skin, on your own terms. Not as everything to everyone, but as someone, finally, to yourself.

And after all, nothing changes.