I feel pressured to have an aesthetic because I associate personhood with linearity.

To be considered a full human, I feel like I need to be definable.

A clear beginning.

A consistent middle.

A conclusion.

Something people can point to and say,

"This is who she is."

I have existed with this constant pressure of being a definable concept.

Deep, but not too complicated.

Interesting, but not too difficult to understand.

Complex, but not enough to require effort.

Because complexity asks something from people.

It asks for patience.

For curiosity.

For time.

For the willingness to sit with contradictions instead of forcing them into something easier.

And I think I have always feared being too much work to know.

Because complexity creates instability.

It requires restructuring.

It requires someone to question their assumptions, reorganize their understanding, and accept that a person cannot always be placed into a simple category.

And perhaps the hardest thing about loving complexity is that it requires you to remain present even when things do not make sense.

You have to hold two truths at once.

You have to understand the cause of someone's suffering while still acknowledging the harm they cause.

You have to see someone's wounds without pretending those wounds erase their responsibility.

You have to love someone as they are without believing they cannot change.

And I think that is where I become afraid.

Because knowing someone's pain often creates this complicated tenderness toward them.

You understand why they became who they are.

You see the experiences that shaped them.

You see the parts of them they never chose.

And then you are left with the impossible question:

How do you hold compassion for someone while still admitting they have damaged you?

How do you stay without abandoning yourself?

How do you leave without feeling like you are betraying someone's humanity?

Maybe I have always assumed people would choose the easiest answer.

And I understand why.

When I lacked the ability to protect my own worth, I became easier to understand.

Easier to stay with.

Easier to love.

I removed the parts of myself that required patience.

I simplified myself so nobody had to work to know me.

I became something that could be understood at face value.

Something predictable.

Something safe.

Because I thought if people saw all of me, the contradictions, the doubts, the grief, the questions, the parts that do not fit neatly together, they would leave.

So I created a version of myself that asked for nothing.

A version that did not challenge anyone.

A version that could be consumed without effort.

But maybe the tragedy is that I became so afraid of being too complex for others that I made myself impossible for even me to know.

I reduced myself into something manageable.

Something explainable.

Something that could survive being looked at.

And now I am left wondering:

Was I trying to become simple enough for people to stay?

Nobody taught me how to be myself.

They taught me how to listen. How to soothe. How to carry. How to stay.

So I became a bridge between people who could not reach each other. A translator of silences. A keeper of secrets.

A child standing between two storms, arms stretched wide, believing that if I held on long enough, the sky would not split.

Nobody asked me to.

That is the tragedy.

I volunteered my soul before I was old enough to know it belonged to me.

I learned that love arrived when I was useful.

So I became useful.

Useful became necessary. Necessary became wanted. Wanted became loved.

And somewhere in the exchange, I misplaced myself.

Now when people ask who I am, I search their faces for the answer.

Tell me what you need.

I can become her.

The believer. The skeptic. The savior. The therapist. The friend who never leaves. The daughter who understands too much. The girl who laughs at her own suffering so nobody feels burdened by it. The doormat. The martyr. The empty vessel.

Whatever shape fits your hands, I will pour myself into it.

I became so fluent in the language of other people that I forgot my own.

I know the weight of your grief. The shape of your wounds. The sound of your loneliness at three in the morning.

I know exactly how to keep you alive.

But ask me what I want. Ask me what I need. Ask me who I am.

And suddenly I am standing in a room with no walls, staring into a darkness that refuses to answer.

For years, I thought I feared abandonment.

I was wrong.

Abandonment implies there is someone left behind.

I feared discovery.

I feared someone looking beneath the kindness, the strength, the usefulness, and finding only dust.

Only fragments.

Only the outline of a person who spent so much time becoming everyone else's home that she forgot to build one for herself.

So I hid.

Not behind lies.

Behind service. Behind sacrifice. Behind the holy applause reserved for those who give until there is nothing left.

People called it selflessness.

I called it purpose.

Neither of us noticed it was a funeral.

Every day, another piece of me laid gently into the ground.

A dream. A boundary. A desire. A truth. A voice.

And I mourned none of them.

After all, they died for a good cause.

Someone needed me.

Someone always needed me.

And their need felt warmer than my emptiness.

So I fed it. Watered it. Worshipped it.

Until their dependence became my oxygen.

Until I no longer knew whether I was keeping them alive or whether they were keeping me from having to meet myself.

Now the crowd has gone quiet.

The crises are ending.

The voices are fading.

And for the first time, I am left alone with the stranger I have spent a lifetime avoiding.

She sits across from me.

Wordless.

Patient.

Waiting.

She wears my face.

And I realize the abyss I feared was never emptiness.

It was her.

The person buried beneath every version of myself I created for everyone else.

The person who remained after all the performances ended.

The person I spent years mistaking for nothing.

She is still here.

Breathing beneath the rubble. Waiting beneath the sacrifice. Surviving beneath the disappearance.

And perhaps the question was never,

"Who am I when nobody needs me?"

Perhaps the question is,

The lens shifted, and the world tore open in silence. What I called clarity was only a blindfold with a name I trusted. When it fell, everything I believed turned against me.

Hope was the lie I whispered to myself— that peace waited behind closed doors, that love meant safety, that silence meant rest. But it was never peace. It was protection, carefully built for my siblings, not for me.

They said I was old enough to understand, as if age shields you from breaking. But understanding is heavier than ignorance. It drags you down, until even breathing feels like confession.

Now the house is quiet, but it hums with ghosts of what was hidden. I walk through it weightless, half-alive, half-seeing.

No sadness. No anger. Only the echo of a name I no longer answer to.

I have become the silence they feared, the proof that truth doesn’t heal— it hollows.

Marriage feels like a quiet funeral,

the burial of self in silk and vows.

They call it sacred,

but I see a cage,

gilded by faith,

locked by devotion.

To be a wife is to perform.

Every smile rehearsed,

every silence scripted.

Obedience dressed as love,

submission praised as virtue.

They say it’s holy,

yet holiness should not demand surrender.

What god delights in ownership?

What faith thrives on a woman’s silence?

I am torn between two devotions

to love, which asks for my disappearance,

and to freedom, which asks for my defiance.

So, I choose rebellion.

I choose to love without chains,

to live without belonging,

to believe in no faith

I don’t feel worthy of ease.

Even silence around you feels earned,

like I must apologize for breathing too softly.

I shrink

before someone asks me to—

before your eyes linger too long,

before kindness becomes unbearable.

My loneliness is not absence.

It is architecture.

I built it with both hands,

naming each wall protection,

each lock survival.

Now I live inside what I made,

and call it peace.

You,

you walk in with light on your hands—

gentle, patient, ruinous.

And I flinch.

Because I see it again,

the distance between what you deserve

and what I am.

I crave your love

like hunger,

but I choke on the thought of deserving it.

You touch me,

and I think of leaving.

You smile,

and I start rehearsing loss.

I mourn us before we begin.

I bury what you offer

under old ruins of “not enough.”

You tell me you see beauty,

I only see proof of your blindness.

So I carry this sad girl aesthetic like armor—

but it is not performance.

It is prayer.

It is punishment.

It is every word I swallowed

when I should have said,

“I want to stay.”

Because deep down I know

it’s not sadness I wear—

it’s self-denial dressed in lace.

It’s longing dressed as distance.

It’s me,

standing in the doorway of your love,

too afraid to walk in.

And still—

when you reach for me,

I wonder,

will you wait?

Will you wait while I untangle this ache,

while I learn how to hold kindness without trembling,

while I teach myself

that your love is not a mirror

to my shame?

Or will you tire

of watching me drown

in the waters I poured myself into?

Because I don’t feel worthy of ease.

I never did.

And yet,

God help me,

I dream of a night where I fade from the scene,

no sound, no cry. Just a life left unseen.

My heart slows down like a drum out of time,

oxygen gone, silence breaking the rhyme.

I plan it so quiet no one has to stare,

no mother, no father, no friend standing there.

Days would go by, I'd stay cold on the floor,

even in death, I'm afraid to be more.

No blade on the wrist, no rope, no choke,

no gasping for breath, no last-minute hope.

Maybe the pills, a soft kind of fall,

no screaming, no flailing, no witness at all.

But then it hits harder than knives ever could,

my sister's first love, my brothers livelihood,

My parents' old hands, my friends finding care,

the moments I'd miss to agonizing despair.

They might mourn, they'd might curse, they might forget,

I would become nothing, a shadow, a dept.

Still somewhere within me, a flicker remains,

a stubborn small ember admist the chains.

I was once luminous, now hollow, confined,

bleeding in silence, with none to remind.

I am expected to stand, unshaken, unbowed,

to carry my burdens, to never speak loud.

No grace from the world, not a whisper for me.

I push myself for what no one can see.

Am I broken, depressed or merely unseen?

I used to think lying was a superpower.

A craft I’d mastered — effortless, sharp, precise.

I wore it like armor, proudly.

Yes, I lie.

And yes, I’m good at it.

But something shifted.

A rupture.

A quiet explosion in my chest.

Now, I carry truths like landmines —

one wrong step, and everything detonates.

I used to lie because I could.

Because it served me.

Because I was in control.

But now?

Now I lie because I have to.

Because the truth would shatter lives,

rip families apart,

leave scars no one would know how to heal.

There is no choice anymore.

No privilege.

Just silence masquerading as protection.

Just the unbearable weight of secrets

that claw at my throat like fire,

and still, I swallow them whole.

It’s not a game anymore.

It’s not clever.

It’s not power.

It’s prison.

I can’t breathe.

This lie — these lies — they wrap around my ribs,

tighten with every heartbeat.

They are suffocating me.

Screaming inside my skull.

And when I think about self-harming,

when the urge rises like a tide I can't escape,

even then I gag on the answer to the question,

"Why?"

Because I can’t say.

Because I can’t let it out.

Because the moment I do,

I stop protecting them —

and protecting them is the only thing

keeping me from unraveling completely.

I’ve told so many lies

woven so many stories

that now even my own truth feels foreign.

This has to be worth it.

Tell me it’s worth it.

Because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this in

Trust was never given lightly.

It was earned —

not by perfection,

but by presence.

I believed in it.

In the quiet safety of someone I thought would never hurt me.

I thought I was the exception.

The one soul they'd shelter, not shatter.

But silence was a traitor,

disguised as peace.

Every word I didn’t speak

carved out more room

for resentment to bloom.

They weren’t flawless —

they left scars on others,

but never me.

Until they did.

And suddenly, I wasn't different.

I was just another chapter in the story

of someone who breaks things they’re meant to protect.

The strange part?

Speaking up —

claiming my pain —

hurt more than the betrayal itself.

Confrontation didn’t set me free.

It fractured me.

Left me wide awake

as tears tried to sing me to sleep.

They’ll never know.

Never feel the aftershock

of what their choices triggered in me.

That night…

for the first time,

I felt the absence of hope.

I used to think

those thoughts only lived in stories —

in people I couldn’t understand.

But there I was,

wondering what it would take to disappear.

They were supposed to be

a reason to keep breathing.

Instead,

they became the first reason I questioned why I should.

And all for what…

A moment?

A choice?

A cost that only I seem to carry?