Friday’s meeting slipped through your fingers until you opened Excel at midnight. Row by row, you rebuilt who said what, when. The shortfall you flagged. The nod he gave. The action items he walked out with that had started in your head.

This wasn’t therapy. It was documentation. Because memory can be doubted, but formulas can’t. The Silence Tax isn’t always the extra work you do: sometimes it’s the record you’re forced to keep so no one can erase what happened.

This is exhausting. You're not imagining it.

Content Notice:
The exhaustion documented here is real. To protect all involved, details have been fictionalized, events composited, and circumstances altered beyond recognition. Some dialogue has been reconstructed.
This is not memoir. This is not confession. This is pattern recognition.
This is commentary on systemic patterns, not accounts of specific individuals or employers.
Any resemblance to your specific husband, boss, or situation means the pattern is working exactly as designed.
This content is for documentation purposes only. It is not therapy, not advice, not a solution.