For a long time, I used to say I had a happy childhood. And I truly believed it.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder: what if, sometimes, survival disguises itself as joy?
When I arrived at boarding school, carrying a checkered bag and a backpack with a broken zipper, my legs gave out. But in truth, my breath was the first to leave my body.
Twelve beds stood straight like ribs: white, with metal frames and cold bars that clinked at the slightest touch. The air smelled of old detergent and dust. Under one of the beds lay a stiff, abandoned sock. On the wall, a hair tie twisted around a nail. Silent traces of other girls who had learned, each in her own way, how to survive there.
This was supposed to be the beginning of a better life for me.
“If you leave me here, I’ll die,” I said.
“It’s not that bad,” my mother replied, with a forced cheerfulness.
Then my parents turned on their heels and left.
No hugs. No kisses. Just the sound of their fading steps down the stairs.
Then, nothing.
I didn’t run after them. I didn’t cry.
I didn’t even considered those were valid options.
That night, I slept fully clothed, shoes on, as if someone might come for me and I had to be ready.
Of course, no one came.
So I packed my sorrow small, just like I packed my second-hand clothes, and swallowed it whole. I called it ambition.
I learned that love must be earned. Like grades. Like applause.
That’s how I became the girl who doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t ask, doesn’t complain.
I had dreamed of getting there. Not to that bed, not to that room, but to the opportunity itself. I was fourteen. From a small, unpaved village where girls, and even boys, rarely got the chance to leave the place they were born.
I wanted more.
My parents told me I wouldn’t make it. That I wasn’t cut out for it.
But I earned a scholarship. I convinced them.
At home, there were eight younger siblings, and one shot at a better life.
I was that shot.
I kept my voice down and my grades up.
I worked. I performed. I succeeded.
I helped my parents and siblings.
I proved I could.
I smiled through exhaustion, illness, heartbreak.
I never had space to fall apart.
Wouldn’t have even known how.
As if proving I was enough would somehow make me worthy of love.
All my life, I wore invisible shoes.
Always ready to run. Always tense, bracing for the next test.
Somewhere deep inside, next to ambition, this belief calcified:
If I’m indispensable, then it was all worth it.
But the body keeps score.
Years later, after degrees, children, a career, after collecting every gold star I thought would save me, I found myself unable to move.
My mind was fog.
My bones, lead.
The words, the very thing that had kept me afloat, were gone.
Burnout hit me like a freight train.
And depression dragged heavy chains behind it.
I couldn’t prove anything anymore.
I couldn’t please anyone anymore.
I couldn’t hide the terrified girl in that dormitory anymore.
I had to learn a different way of living.
Not one that draws applause and admiration, but one that allows me to sit quietly with my own pain without trembling.
Not because I chose to, but because I had no choice.
I couldn’t function anymore.
I couldn’t fight.
I couldn’t “get over it.”
I had to go through it.
I had to return to the girl I left alone in that dorm room.
To kneel beside her and whisper:
“You’re allowed to be scared.
You’re allowed to cry.
You’re allowed to miss your parents, your brothers and sisters.
You know… your mother cried too, that day. Just not in front of you.
You never had to earn the right to be loved.
You were never not enough.
And you were never meant to do it all alone.”
At first, she said nothing.
But I stayed with her.
And, for the first time, that was enough.
I had to learn not to hide inside myself anymore.
I write again, but differently.
I rest.
I’ve learned to say “no.”
I stay.
I guide others in discovering their own truth.
I didn’t die in that dorm, like I thought.
But the need to be held did.
Now, slowly, I’m learning the weight and warmth of my own arms.