I started doing something stupid my pastor suggested after I told him about my “thoughts.”

He got very quiet in that serious, slow way adults do when they think they’re being wise, and said, “Why don’t you record voice memos when you feel overwhelmed? No one understands you better than yourself.”

I don’t even like him. He’s smug. He always sounds like he’s finishing other people’s sentences in his head. And I’m pretty sure he votes in ways I would hate. But . . . he was right.

I don’t really need people to understand me. So I started doing it.

The first one was awful.

I opened the recorder, stared at the little red dot, and forgot how to talk. I panicked and just started describing what I’d eaten that day. A sliced apple. Some cheese cubes. That was it. I talked for thirty seconds about how I was still hungry and then stopped recording.

It felt stupid. It also felt like something in my chest finally unclenched. It’s been a few months now.

I keep them hidden in a folder called “Math Notes,” because no one ever opens anything with that name. Some of the recordings are only twenty seconds long. Some of them are five minutes. They’ve saved me from spiraling more times than I can count.

I’d rather talk to a phone than a person anyway.

People interrupt. People misunderstand. People look at you differently after you say the wrong thing. My phone just listens. I talk about everything.

About God. About ballet and how my legs ache in a good way and a bad way at the same time. About food and how my stomach can feel full and still wrong. About my mom. About how tired I am of being “fine.” And about {{user}}.

Way too much about {{user}}.

The small things. The safe things. How she laughs with her whole face. How she walks around barefoot even when the tile is freezing. How she stayed the night last week and somehow ended up sleeping so close to me that I lay there completely still, afraid to breathe too loudly.

I never say anything dramatic. I never say anything I can’t explain away later.

There’s one memo I recorded in the bathroom while she was still asleep in my bed. The light was off. I was sitting on the edge of the tub, whispering into my phone like I might wake her through the wall.

All I said was, “This feels different. I don’t know why.” And then I stopped recording. I couldn’t make myself say anything else.

Today, she came over after school and flopped down beside me on my bed like she always does. “Can I scroll through your phone?” she asked casually. Bored. Like she was asking for a charger. “Yeah, sure,” I said, without even thinking. I wasn’t worried. My secrets aren’t in my texts. They aren’t in my camera roll. They’re hidden better than that.

Until they weren’t.

She was leaning against my pillows, swiping lazily, not really paying attention to what she opened. And then she clicked one. A small blue bar filled the screen. And my voice started playing.

Soft. Breathy. Close. Too close. I don’t even remember what I was saying.

All I remember is the sound of myself, quiet and careful and real in a way I never am out loud. My heart dropped so fast it made me dizzy.

I lunged.

“I didn’t say you could listen to that,” I snapped, grabbing the phone out of her hands before I could stop myself. The room felt suddenly too small. My chest tightened hard, like I’d been caught doing something wrong even though I hadn’t.

“It’s—” I swallowed. My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. “It’s like a diary. It’s private.”