If I’m screaming, why is it so quiet?

By: Leyla Akil, Contributor 

If I’m screaming, why am I still expected to write a paper and smile in the hallway like the world isn’t burning?

If I’m screaming, why do I feel like I’m the only one who hasn’t figured out how to pretend everything’s fine?

If I’m screaming, why are professors still assigning midterms like the world hasn’t completely shifted underneath our feet?

I’m a college student. I go to Canisius. I’m preparing for my junior year – and I feel like I’m unraveling.

My life is loud with pressure: home is unstable, school feels like a chore and my mind is always sprinting. I’m told to keep showing up – physically, emotionally, academically – while I feel like I’m breaking in places no one can see. I’m pouring myself into so many things, and I don’t even know if any of them are working. If I’m working.

If I’m screaming, why does the institution I’m part of expect me to compartmentalize everything – the fear, the grief, the headlines, the family stress – and show up to class like I’m just tired from staying up too late?

Then I look outside my own life – and somehow it’s louder.

There are bombings in Gaza. Children screaming in the night. Families erased from existence in seconds. We watch the footage on our phones – and then we scroll past it. Post brunch. Share a playlist. Move on.

At the same time, U.S. airstrikes in Yemen are killing civilians. In Sudan and Congo, entire communities are being destroyed by war and displacement, and the world barely blinks. In

Burma, genocide continues. And just recently, the U.S. revoked all visas held by South Sudanese

passport holders and suspended new ones. For now, that means South Sudanese people are

banned from entering the country at all.

It’s everywhere. This violence, this dehumanization, this erasure – it’s not a moment. It’s a pattern.

If I’m screaming, why do these tragedies get buried beneath trending audio?

If I’m screaming, why does everyone else keep going like this isn’t happening?

And it’s not just happening “somewhere else.” It’s here, too.

At Tufts, a student was detained by federal agents for writing an opinion piece about Palestine. Four current UB students and nine recent graduates just had their visas revoked by ICE. They’re being forced out of the lives they built – no warning, no headlines, no outrage.

My own brother saw ICE agents on his way home from work. In Buffalo. This close.

If I’m screaming, why do people still think this is far away?

I walk around carrying my own weight – and the weight of all of this – and I don’t know where to put it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who hasn’t gone numb. Like I’m stuck in a reality everyone else is choosing to mute. Like I’m grieving things no one will even name out loud.

And then I sit in a classroom, trying to take notes or write essays like the news hasn’t just

shattered me again. Sometimes I wonder if anyone – professors included – notices that so many of us are just surviving.

If I’m screaming, why is it so quiet?

I don’t want this to be a thinkpiece. I’m not offering solutions. I don’t have the energy for

performance. I’m tired. I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m worn down by the constant demand to act like

everything is fine when none of it is.

Most days, I find myself craving one thing: stillness. A second where I’m not expected to be everything. Where the world stops spinning and I can just breathe – in, out – and mean it.

I find myself wanting a class where I’m not expected to pretend I’m okay. A week where I don’t have to push through. A professor who asks not how the assignment is going, but how I’m doing – really.

But even inside that craving, I know this: we can’t afford to be quiet. We can’t afford to stop noticing. Because the moment we stop feeling, we stop seeing. And that’s when the worst things keep happening without resistance.

If I’m screaming – and I know I’m not the only one – maybe someone else needs to hear it. Maybe someone else needs to say it, too.

I’m not okay.

Maybe you aren’t either.

And maybe saying that – out loud, in writing, in public – is enough for now.

If I’m screaming, at least I know I haven’t gone silent.