> When my mom finally left,
I didn't cry the way people expect a child to cry.
No begging. No clinging to her dress.
I just stood there —
and folded the last thread of safety into a corner of my heart,
somewhere I could still touch it, even when it wasn't real anymore.
She didn't leave because she wanted to.
Life forced her.
I know that now.
But at the time, all I knew was:
She was gone.
And the emptiness she left behind —
was filled with something even worse.
---
It was just the beginning of my secondary school.
I was supposed to be thinking about books, shoes, first crushes, school clubs…
Instead, I was waking up every day in a house that didn't want me.
And the person they brought in to "help" —
was my aunt.
The same one.
The one who years earlier had gone behind my back and told my brothers:
> "She's not your sister. She doesn't belong to this family."
Now she was back.
But this time… in control.
With keys.
With authority.
With a voice loud enough to remind me daily of who I wasn't.
---
> I wasn't my father's daughter.
I wasn't my siblings' sister.
I wasn't family.
Just a stain they were forced to keep cleaning.
And what hurt most?
My father — the man who once told me to lie, who once smiled at me like maybe love was enough —
he asked her to come help.
The woman who had said the cruelest thing I'd ever overheard.
I don't know how he cooled his anger.
I don't know how the rage that once demanded I leave his house turned into small, soft smiles at the dinner table.
But it did.
He smiled.
Pretended like the fight never happened.
Like he hadn't once chosen to push me out and no one else.
And every time he smiled… I smiled back.
Because I'd learned by now:
> Smiles hide storms.
And mine had become a full-blown hurricane.
---
> Living with her was like sleeping inside an open wound.
Every word she spoke was dipped in venom.
Every task she gave me, extra hard.
Every glance, full of contempt.
I was never just a child in her eyes.
I was a mistake.
A walking reminder of a past the family didn't want to remember.
A symbol of shame, disobedience, sin.
---
And I had no one.
Mom was gone.
My siblings didn't know what to say.
And my voice — it was buried somewhere under every lie I'd ever been told to tell.
---
> This wasn't a home anymore.
This was a sentence.
And I had no release date.
---