Ain’t That A VHIT
By Von C. Howard
As a Black man, there are moments in life where you learn, sometimes without anyone directly telling you, that it’s easier to keep certain feelings to yourself. Over time, I’ve realized that many of the situations that hurt me most were the ones I never addressed. Not because they didn’t matter, but because I convinced myself it was better to move on than to risk being misunderstood.
For much of my life, I’ve taken pride in being steady, composed, and able to keep pushing forward regardless of the circumstances. That mindset can serve you well. It helps you endure difficult seasons, navigate complex environments, and maintain respect in spaces where you often feel the pressure to represent more than just yourself.
But what I’ve had to be honest about lately is that endurance can sometimes become quiet suppression.
There have been moments where something someone said bothered me more than I let on. Moments where I felt overlooked or misunderstood. Moments where a conversation probably needed to happen, but I chose silence instead. I told myself I was being the bigger person. I told myself it wasn’t worth disrupting relationships or creating tension.
And to some degree, that approach protected me.
Or at least I thought it did.
What I didn’t realize was that every time I swallowed those feelings, I wasn’t eliminating the hurt, I was storing it. Piece by piece, it accumulated. And over time, that quiet accumulation began to affect how I showed up in other areas of my life.
When you suppress enough of your own emotions, you start disconnecting from them altogether. You become skilled at managing perceptions. You present the version of yourself that people expect to see: calm, respectful, agreeable. But inside, you may be carrying things that were never fully processed.
And sometimes, that unresolved hurt finds its way out in subtle ways.
You may become a little more guarded. A little less patient. A little less willing to open up, even with people who genuinely care about you. Not because you want to hurt anyone, but because you’ve spent so much time protecting yourself from being hurt or misunderstood.
The difficult realization I’ve had to face is that when you don’t address your own pain, you can unintentionally create distance with the very people who mean the most to you—or unintentionally create distance from people who are genuinely trying to establish relationships with you, whether personal, professional, or otherwise. The hurt you tried so hard to contain doesn’t disappear, it simply changes form.
For me, growth has meant learning that silence isn’t always strength. Sometimes strength is acknowledging when something affected you and being honest about it, even if it feels uncomfortable.
I’m still learning that being true to myself doesn’t make me difficult. It makes me human.
And if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand, it’s this: when we begin to confront the hurt we’ve quietly carried, we give ourselves, and others, the chance to experience