PROLOGUE
I am still here. That means I am not crazy.
I am still here. I breathe, I think, I remember. Sometimes that is stronger evidence than any folder filled with signatures. It is like a simple rule: if your tooth hurts, you have a tooth. If you are reading these lines and something inside you tightens, if you feel that quiet tension in your stomach or the familiar thought, maybe the problem is me, pause for a moment. The problem is rarely the person who begins to ask questions. More often, it is the environment that prefers people without questions, or at least without a voice.
This text is not about scandal. It is about mechanisms. About pressure that leaves no bruises, yet leaves doubt. About places where no one raises their voice, but everyone laughs. And that is exactly where fear begins, quiet, orderly, smiling.
No one looks you in the eye and says, “You are the problem.” That would be too honest. It is said more cleverly, through a joke, a wink, a casual, “Come on, we’re just kidding,” or “We’re like a family here,” or “That’s just our sense of humor,” or “We’re very direct.” Direct, but always in one direction.
If you do not laugh, you are no longer a “team player.” You become “sensitive,” or “too serious,” or someone who “doesn’t understand the culture.” Eventually it reaches the most convenient diagnosis of all: “There’s something about you that doesn’t fit our way of thinking. You’re just different.” For women, this is called “being emotional.” For men, “lacking a sense of humor.” The outcome is the same.
You stand in a room full of mirrors that subtly distort your reflection, until one day you begin to wonder whether you are the distorted one. The mirrors, of course, are “fine.” They always are. It is like sitting in a pool where the water warms slowly. No one pushes you under. No one pulls you in. You simply stay, you smile, you adapt. Until one day you notice you are breathing more shallowly. Everyone else seems to swim calmly and nod at you encouragingly. So, apparently, the problem cannot be the water.
This is how a culture of smiles works. It does not press openly. It persuades. Until you begin to question whether your perception is real. Until you start correcting yourself, shrinking yourself, adjusting yourself. Laughing when nothing is funny. Staying silent when something inside you is screaming.
I am still here. And that means one thing: I am not crazy. It means there is logic. There is a pattern. There is an anatomy.
Comfort has never been a measure of truth.
This book is not consolation, and it is not an accusation. It is a map.
And if it hurts at times, it is not because you are weak. It is because, perhaps for the first time, you are looking without a smile. And truth, without a smile, can sometimes look as if it is baring its teeth.
At least now you know where the teeth come from.
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