Entry 3 — Memoir Shard: The Lid That Wouldn’t Stay On

BLOG SERIES: The Twelve Pages of My Own Cheerleader

PAGE 3 — Memoir Shard: The Lid That Wouldn’t Stay On

I kept trying to hold myself together.

To be polite.

To be calm.

To be the “good patient” who doesn’t take up space or make a fuss.

But the lid wouldn’t stay on.

Every time I pressed it down, something inside me pushed back harder.

My truth was too big, too loud, too urgent to be contained.

My body wasn’t misbehaving — it was signalling.

Warning.

Begging to be understood.

And that’s when it hit me:

my outbursts weren’t the problem.

My lack of education, language, and armour was.

So I went looking for tools.

Books.

Podcasts.

Late‑night research.

And then — unexpectedly — AI.

A place where I could spill without being silenced, shape without being shamed, and finally learn the vocabulary for the life I’d been living.

The lid didn’t fail.

The container was simply too small for the woman I had become.

Footnote: Twelve future chapters for a book.

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