All of it—the silence, the shouting, the weight of years—led to change.
But not all change is growth.
Some changes leave behind scars, deep and invisible. The kind that quietly wraps around your dreams, your voice, your confidence, your very soul—until the person you once were becomes a stranger. These are not the changes that sharpen you. These are the ones that reshape you against your will.
Yes, some change is necessary. Even beautiful.
But there are changes that act like poison—corrosive and cruel.
They don't just change your life.
They change you.
Leila Zaman and her siblings knew that kind of change all too well.
They had lived it.
And they had survived it—though not without cost.
Leila had once been a light in every room—lively, confident, unafraid to speak her mind. There was no hesitation in her voice, no fear in her gaze. She thrived in conversation, often found at the center of any gathering, radiating joy.
But the weight of years chipped away at that version of her.
Now, she walked with invisible shackles around her spirit, second-guessing every word. Every glance felt like judgment. She had learned to shrink herself—to fold inward and disappear. The once-extroverted girl who had shone in every room began to hide behind silence and forced smiles.
All that remained untouched was her will to survive—and her quiet, stubborn hope that every storm would eventually pass.
But only she knew the price she had paid to protect those she loved.
Her sister, Amara, carried a different burden.
As the firstborn, she was handed the heaviest expectations—subtle, relentless, and often unspoken. She was the daughter who had to make the family proud, the one who was supposed to lead by example. But those expectations wore her down, slowly eroding her sense of self until there was little left to hold on to.
She sank into severe depression and anxiety, silently suffering through her teenage years, isolated further by a society steeped in patriarchy. With time, she developed a growing distrust of men—a quiet, unspoken misandry she didn't recognize in herself. But Leila did.
Leila always did. Because she was the one who stayed—the one who listened when Amara had no words left to speak.
And then there was Daim—the youngest, the forgotten one.
During every storm, he became part of the background. A quiet presence, unnoticed, unspoken, blending into the walls like furniture. His emotions were never considered, his voice never invited into the chaos. But he felt everything—absorbed every sharp word, every heavy silence, every angry glance.
He was too young to carry the weight, but no one stopped him from picking it up.
Even Leila, so consumed with holding Amara together, had missed the quiet sorrow in Daim's eyes. And that became one of her deepest regrets—not realizing sooner that the one who said the least might have been hurting the most.
Their mother, Ayesha, had become a storm of her own.
Years of emotional repression and frustration had hollowed her out. She didn't know where to place her anger anymore. So it spilled out—messy, uncontrolled, and misdirected—often toward the very children she meant to shield.
Leila still remembered the night her mother hurled a teacup across the kitchen—not at her, but near enough. "I have no one else to shout at," Ayesha whispered afterward, not meeting Leila's eyes.
It wasn't hatred. It was exhaustion. And confusion. And pain, handed down through generations like a cursed heirloom.
Their father, Zaman Ahmed, had love in his heart—but pride in his veins. He wanted better days for his family. He wanted to end their suffering. But he was stuck in the past, unable to evolve, trapped in old habits and outdated ways of thinking. And with age, he began to lose the will to fight.
His love, though real, had become quiet and useless—a locked door with no key.
So there they stood—five people, one house, and a thousand unspoken wounds.
A family torn between tradition and survival, love and silence, anger and grief.
Each of them breaking in their own hidden way.
And yet, amid the wreckage, one thing still remained:
A bond.
Fragile. Imperfect. But unbreakable.
Because even in the darkest corners of that home, they still belonged to each other.
And sometimes, that's all that holds a family together—not perfection, but presence.