Caught Between Smiles: The Invisible Pain We Don’t Always See

It began as a playful moment during a cuddle, lighthearted and innocent. He joked, and I smiled, flowing with the ease of the moment. I didn’t want to seem too serious, too dramatic, or "too much." So, I kept the smile on my face, letting it continue—until something shifted.

Suddenly, when he touched me in my pelvic area, a place deeply connected to early trauma, my awareness split in two. Consciously, I continued laughing, offering him to join our cuddle group. But my unconscious self felt it differently, and that’s what came up later.

After he left, a friend I was cuddling with, let’s call him Amit, asked me, “Did you feel comfortable when he touched you like that?”

I froze, the question disorienting. Amit had notice what I couldn’t—he noticed the moment when my body stiffened, the way I distanced myself, not with words but with the language of my body.

He described how I had recoiled when he touched me in a way I hadn’t invited, how I immediately began to make excuses, anything to leave the space, to get away from the discomfort. In those moments, my body knew what my mind hadn’t fully grasped: my boundaries had been crossed.

I cried when Amit shared his observation. Not just because I had been touched without consent, but because I realized how often my boundaries had been violated without anyone noticing, including myself. I cried for all the times I didn’t have someone like Amit to see me, to help me recognize when my body was saying, this is too much.  I cried for the quiet pain of crossing boundaries, in silence, in moments that seemed too small to speak of but were large enough to break a piece of me each time.

I am endlessly grateful for Amit, for his quiet, unwavering presence. But I also wish for all of us to become our own Amit—someone who notices when our boundaries are crossed, who has the courage to say something, even if it's uncomfortable. And I wish for us to learn how to listen to the unspoken language of our bodies, so we can recognize when we need to say no and when we need to say enough.