You stopped performing your trauma and started processing it. The audience booed. You healed anyway.
Your wound was your brand. Your pain was your content. The day you chose to heal it, you lost the followers but gained yourself.
Your pain had an audience.
It was your most engaging content.
The breakup post. The therapy update. The vulnerability dump.
People loved it.
Shared it. Commented. Related.
You were rewarded for bleeding in public.
So you kept bleeding.
Not to heal. To perform.
The wound became a brand.
Your trauma was your identity.
And healing threatened both.
Because healed people are less interesting to an algorithm.
One day your therapist said something that landed.
"You're not processing. You're broadcasting."
You went quiet for three months.
No posts. No updates. No sharing.
The engagement dropped.
The followers thinned.
But the wound started closing.
For real this time.
You stopped performing your pain and started processing it. The audience left. The algorithm forgot you. And for the first time, the healing was real. Because it had no audience.