Someone: "Do you hate your family?"
Me: "No, I don't hate them. I just wish, if there's a next life, I don't have to be born into a home that teaches me to survive instead of feel."
People think I'm dramatic until they've lived it: explaining myself a hundred times, only to be half-heard, mislabeled, or dismissed. I'm tired of being the problem just because I'm the first one who speaks the truth. No one ever took the time to understand me that's why I grew up not understanding myself either. I learned to hold my breath around the people who should have been my oxygen. I learned that even when I do right, I can be told it's wrong. I learned that my positives don't count if they don't fit someone else's story about me.
I don't hate my family. I hate that "home" felt like walking on glass. I hate that love sounded like, "be quieter," "be smaller," "be grateful," while I kept shrinking to keep the peace. I hate that when I finally tried to explain, I was met with eye-rolls, lectures, or silence - and somehow, I became the ungrateful one.
If you've ever felt abandoned in a room full of your own people, if you've ever been betrayed for telling your side. If you've ever been misunderstood until you doubted your own memory - I see you. You are not hard to love: you were just taught love without listening. You are not the villain for wanting softness. You are allowed to build a future where "home" means safety, not self-erasure. And if no one has told you this yet: your feelings make sense. You make sense.
