A poem for me

To nine-year-old me, because you didn't have the words to explain back then.

You only knew that the weight of the world felt heavier than it was supposed to

You lost friends,

You lost family,

You lost people

And blamed yourself for it,

So you changed yourself

You thought changing meant people staying 

So you became quieter, thinking it would make people stay

You thought that trying harder would not push everyone away

And you tried so hard to make people stay

But no one noticed 

And no one cared

And mostly, you just learned how to stay quiet

Because if you weren't too loud, you weren't seen

And people not seeing somehow meant them staying

People still saw you as the kid who's always happy

You learned to smile when you were expected

You learned to laugh when everyone else laughed

And slowly, pretending and acting became easier than explaining

I wish I could tell you that you were right

And I wish I could tell you people noticed, but

No one noticed you were quiet.

No one noticed the words you swallowed.

No one noticed the small self you became.

You became silent when you learned no one cared.

I wish I could tell you that you didn't sit alone 

Night after night after night

Waiting for a change

Hoping for a change

And watched in helplessness.

When change never came

I wish I could tell you everything changed in one day

But it didn't

There wasn't a moment when everything suddenly became okay

Things just moved forward,

Quietly, 

Slowly

And painfully

And you moved with them

Because you had no choice.

I wish I could say,

 That you didn't grow up faster than a kid should have

I wish I could say things got better quickly

But they didn't

You just learned how to hide how you felt,  instead of telling people

Because that's what you learned was normal

You learned how to exist in the background,

Without asking too many questions or asking for too much

And you felt like giving up

So many times,

But somehow you kept going

You kept going, not because life suddenly became easy and fair,

And not because everything changed and worked out how you hoped

But because you were strong enough,

Strong enough and worthy enough,

To stay

When it would have been infinitely easier to leave

I wish I could tell you that you learned loudness,

That you learned how to stop hiding in the background

But we haven't

But we're trying, and that's enough. 

You're still quite

You still hide

You still overthink

And you still remember everything,

Even when you want to forget

Despite all this,

You are here,

You made it

And maybe to a lot of people, that doesn't sound like a lot

But it's more than you thought was possible for so long

This poem isn't about how everything suddenly fixed itself. 

It's just a reminder that you survived

You survived long enough to grow,

Long enough to become someone who understands the weight of the world

Long enough to realise that life isn't fair

And that's okay

You made it this far, and that has to matter

You made it, even if life was never fair

So keep going. I'm proud of you