I Finally See Myself

They watch my lips move,
yet never hear the words I swallowed.
They read my grades, my smiles, my silent nods
none of which carry the weight I carry.

I built walls of calm around the shaking heart.
They called it strength.
They never asked how many nights I counted shadows,
how many mornings I dressed the parts of me
that still trembled.

My dreams sat quietly at the table,
uninvited, invisible.
“Study, study, study,” they said,
as though my sketches, my stories, my songs, my whispered hopes
did not matter.
Even if I win ,
They'll own my success. 

So I stopped speaking the storms.
When I laughed, they said I chatter too much.
When I faltered, they said I was weak.
And slowly, I learnt to vanish into the quiet.

At home, I exist in the corners of rooms,
a figure framed by absence.
If someone asked who knew me,
I would hesitate
for knowing me means seeing the breaks
the cuts they never healed.

Still, I walk the corridors of expectation,
holding my lungs in,
till I forget how to breathe fully.
Yet beneath the hush,
a pulse remains
a reminder that I am not the silence they crafted.

There comes a time
when silence stops protecting you
and starts consuming you.

I feel it in my bones 
the heaviness of words I never said,
the ache of being misunderstood
again and again
until I stopped trying to explain.

People say,
“Be grateful.”
They don’t know
how gratitude feels like guilt
when your heart is hollow.

Every mirror
asks me who I’ve become.
I look back
and see someone tired of pretending,
someone holding the pieces
that no one bothered to notice were broken.

I used to dream in color.
Now everything feels washed out,
like the world turned the brightness down
and forgot to turn it back up.

Maybe I’m not fading 
maybe I’m just tired
of being the strong one
in a story no one reads.

But somewhere,
in the faintest corner of my chest,
a small voice whispers:
you’re still here.
You’re still trying.
And maybe,
that’s enough for now.
And still they say I'm useless. 

But this day,
the light touched my face
as if it remembered me.

For the first time,
I didn’t turn away.
I let it stay,
soft and golden,
reminding me
that warmth still belongs to me too.

The world hasn’t changed 
it’s still loud,
still careless,
still full of people who don’t look deep enough.
But I’ve changed.
I see myself now.

The girl who stayed quiet
still lives inside me,
but she’s learning to breathe again 
slowly,
gently,
without fear.

I no longer need them to understand.
I just need to keep going,
to keep becoming,
to keep loving
even the broken parts of me.

Because maybe,
after all the pain,
I was never useless.
Just unseen.
And now…
I finally see myself.

- Sakina Banu