When my mind was a dim room
and the walls leaned inward,
nobody knocked.
Nobody asked why the light was gone.
I learned to breathe in the dark
and stitch myself together
with shaking hands.
When I was drowning quietly,
I sank without a ripple.
I could have vanished,
and the world would have kept walking.
Silence was the only witness
to the nights I almost disappeared.
But when I rose—
when my voice stopped trembling,
when I could stand without folding,
when I could speak without breaking—
suddenly they remembered my name.
Suddenly I mattered.
Suddenly I was worth the weight
of a conversation.
They cared only when I was shining,
never when I was shattering.
They wanted the version of me
that could carry the room,
not the one curled on the floor
trying to survive the storm.
So I became my own shelter.
My own rescue.
My own witness.
I dragged myself out of the wreckage
with no map, no guide,
just the stubborn belief
that I deserved to live.
Now when they reach for me,
I remember the quiet—
the way it swallowed me whole.
And I keep my distance,
not out of anger,
but out of truth.
I survived without them.
I will continue without them.
I am no longer a ghost
in my own life.