There are homes where laughter lives in the walls—where parents kiss, gently argue over the dinner table, and whisper warmth into their children's nights.
Mine wasn't one of them.
I grew up in a house that echoed. Not with joy. But with tension, with silence thick enough to choke on, with words that stung even when they weren't meant for me. My parents rarely looked at each other the way people in movies did. Their love, if it ever existed, had long since decayed into bitter compromise.I remember being five and watching them argue over the color of the curtains.
Six, when my father didn't speak to my mother for a week.
Seven, when I started to believe that maybe love was a story people made up.
But even in all that chaos, a part of me still craved it—desperately. I would stare at strangers holding hands in markets, mothers brushing the hair out of their daughter's eyes, and wonder, What does that feel like?
To be held.
To be chosen.
To be loved without condition.
Instead, I became a child who chased approval like it was air. I tried everything to make my parents smile. I drew crayon versions of us holding hands, placed them on the fridge with pride, only to have them taken down without a word. I learned to read earlier than most kids. I placed first in class. I made my bed. I stayed quiet when the yelling started.
But no matter what I did, it was never enough.
My father had a way of masking control as care. "Don't talk to strangers." "Don't go out alone." "I'm just protecting you." But his eyes always held something colder, sharper. It didn't feel like love—it felt like a cage with good intentions scribbled on the outside.
My mother? She didn't hit me. She didn't scream. But her silence could cut through skin. She looked at me like I was a question she regretted asking. Every praise was followed by a "but"—
"You did well, but your handwriting is messy."
"You're pretty, but not like your cousin."
"You got an A, but you could've gotten an A+."
I started to carry shame like a second skin.
And what made it worse? I thought it was my fault.
Maybe I wasn't good enough to be loved gently. Maybe if I smiled more. Maybe if I stopped crying. Maybe if I just kept giving...
So I did.
I tried for my relatives, for my teachers, for kids who only remembered me when they needed something. I gave pieces of myself like they were free samples, hoping someone would finally take one and stay. But no one ever did.
Sometimes I'd lie in bed and imagine a world where I was different. Where my parents looked at me like I was something fragile and precious. Where "I love you" wasn't a phrase I had to beg for.
Instead, I learned to listen for footsteps outside my door to guess what mood my father was in. I learned to read the twitch of my mother's mouth before she criticized me. I learned to cry in silence, into pillows, into books, into nothing.
No one ever taught me how to love.
They only taught me how to ache quietly.
And so I began to believe that tenderness was something other people got.
Not me.
Never me.
But still... I hoped.