shreyo

I've never truly known that feeling of belonging, not in shared laughter, not in teasing jokes, not in loud, chaotic fights. I was just… there. Smiling like I meant it, sitting quietly, wondering how long before I'd be alone again.

It's in the way I always came last on the priority list. The way I was left out of cousin hangouts. The way my interests were laughed at, not leaned into. Maybe because they were all boys, and I was just the girl, the odd one out. A burden, maybe. So why bother taking me along?

And so I sat, again, with people twice my age, absorbing their critiques like bruises: how wrong I was, how short I was, how incapable I seemed to be. And it never ended. "You're always on your phone," they said. But no one asked why.

Why I was always the one left out.

Why I was trying so hard to hide my tears.

Why my hands kept shaking.

Why I dug my fingernails into my skin just to hold it all together.

They never looked beyond the surface. Never saw the quiet battles. Never really saw me.