I don't remember the last time someone called my name with warmth. Maybe I never have. The hallways smelled faintly of disinfectant and damp lockers, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like distant insects. Every face I passed avoided mine, some with disgust, others with deliberate indifference. I had become a shadow walking among living bodies, unnoticed, unwanted.
At home, it wasn't much better. My parents spoke rarely, except to remind me of my failures: grades too low, room too messy, too quiet, too much. "Why don't you talk to people?" my mother asked once, her eyes cold. "You'll end up alone, Mira." I nodded because I didn't have the energy to argue. Her words weren't a warning—they were prophecy. My father muttered something about me being a disappointment while scrolling on his phone, barely lifting his eyes.
So I began to leave. Not physically—there was nowhere I could go—but mentally. I carved a place in my head, a world that bent and shifted the way reality refused to. My room became a gateway. The walls faded, the ceiling opened into skies I painted with my imagination: soft twilight, amber sunlight, vast fields that stretched beyond memory.
I gave this world its own rules. The wind spoke, carrying messages only I could understand. Trees bowed when I passed. Small creatures—half bird, half fox—curled around my shoulders, whispering secrets in ears that only existed in my mind. I named them all: Liri, Koru, Faye. They were patient, gentle, unlike the people outside who ignored me.
School remained a daily ritual of alienation. Teachers' voices blurred into background noise. Bullies taunted me with half-hearted cruelty, thinking it mattered, but it didn't touch me in the same way anymore. I was floating above the hallway, watching through glass walls of my imagination. The laughter of others sounded like echoes from a distant cave, distorted and meaningless.
One day, Emily pushed me into a locker. Her smirk burned. "Why are you so weird?" she asked, laughing as I fell. I tried to respond, to explain that weirdness was merely perspective, that the world was flawed, but words died in my throat. I retreated into my mind as she walked away, and my imaginary world bloomed like a protective shell.
"Are you okay, Mira?" Koru asked, his voice gentle. I nodded. He tilted his head, eyes gleaming with understanding. "You don't need them here. You have us."
And I believed him.
Evenings were the worst. The silence at home pressed against my ears. The air felt heavy, thick with all the words unspoken, all the warmth withheld. My room became my sanctuary. I would lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling as it dissolved into stars, the imaginary sky stretching beyond the limits of reality.
I started keeping a journal. Not for school, not for anyone else. This journal was for my world. I wrote letters to the trees, the wind, the creatures who only existed in my mind. I wrote apologies to people who had never harmed me, confessions of things I had never said. I wrote because I had to.
Sometimes, my hallucinations became more vivid. I would hear voices in the hallway when no one was there, catch glimpses of figures in the corner of my eye. I knew the difference between them and reality, yet it didn't matter. In my mind, they were real. They laughed with me, shared meals with me, whispered dreams into my ears.
School assemblies blurred into one long monotone haze. Teachers gave speeches I didn't hear, students cheered at events I wasn't a part of. I floated through it all. The world outside was gray and dull, but my mind was color. I imagined fields of flowers growing along the edges of the hallways, sunlight spilling across invisible streams, creatures perched on benches and lamp posts.
At home, my parents rarely noticed me. The only times I felt noticed were when they scolded me, each reprimand a reminder that I did not belong. I learned to speak softly, to move like I was made of shadows, invisible and light-footed. My room became a cocoon. Curtains drawn, lights low, the hum of the city outside muffled by walls that were both prison and sanctuary.
I often spoke to the creatures of my mind as if they were my only audience. Liri would perch on my shoulder, feathers brushing against my hair. "You can rest here," she whispered. "The world doesn't matter here. Only this place matters."
"Does it matter at all?" I asked sometimes, my voice trembling. The question had no real answer, yet the echo returned in a soft, comforting way.
Koru appeared beside me, glowing faintly with his golden eyes. "It matters to us. And that is enough."
The days stretched on. I moved through them mechanically—classes, lunch, homework—but in the moments between, I built my world higher, larger, brighter. I painted skies of colors that did not exist, forests filled with whispers, mountains that touched invisible heavens. I created friends who were patient, kind, and unendingly loyal. In them, I found solace my parents, my classmates, and the city had never offered.
Sometimes, the line between reality and imagination blurred. I would see a flicker of Koru in the hallway and a ripple of Liri by the cafeteria fountain. The sight would make my heart flutter with comfort, then sink when I realized no one else saw them. My classmates laughed at shadows, unaware of the worlds they carried with them that I would never inhabit.
Weeks passed. The city moved, people came and went, but I stayed behind the walls of my mind, building, creating, escaping. I spoke less and less to the real world, letting my hallucinations take every role that human interaction should have. Meals became rituals shared with creatures I could name and touch only with my imagination. Sleep was a journey through skies that were mine alone.
One afternoon, my mother knocked on my door. "Mira, you've been in here all day. Come eat." I shook my head without speaking. The knock returned, harder this time. "You're wasting your life!" Her voice cracked with frustration. I closed my eyes and imagined the walls dissolving, the room opening into the endless sky I had crafted, and in that sky, her words fell away like leaves into a silent river.
I was entirely alone.
And yet, I was not lonely—not in the same way. My world had friends, skies, forests, rivers that whispered, and mountains that listened. They were patient, loyal, forgiving. They were everything the real world had denied me.
But the illusion could not erase the ache entirely. There were moments when I glimpsed my reflection in the windowpane and saw the truth: a girl too small for the city, too quiet for the world, clinging to dreams to survive. And in that reflection, I felt a pang, a fleeting hunger for something real. But reality had long abandoned me, and I knew the city outside would not change, would not notice, would not care.
Even in my sanctuary, shadows of my pain lingered. I would walk along invisible streets in my mind, past imaginary towns and forests, speaking to creatures who listened without judgment. And sometimes, I cried—not for the world, not for my parents, but for the self I had buried beneath imagination, beneath survival.
The nights were quiet, endless, filled with stars I had named and planets I had imagined. I would lie on my bed, my journal open, writing letters to no one, hoping that somewhere, somehow, the words would be heard.
The last day of the week came, gray and rainy. I watched the rain streak down my windowpane, the drops forming rivers that carried reflections of a life I had never lived. I opened the curtains slightly, letting the drizzle touch my skin, and for a moment, the world outside and the world within collided.
I saw children laughing in the distance, parents holding hands, a life moving forward without me. And I understood, finally, that the world I had built in my mind was safe, warm, and loyal—but it was not real. Yet I did not cry. I did not move. I stayed still, breathing in the cool, wet air.
Liri fluttered to my shoulder, Koru's golden eyes glimmered in the corner of my vision, and Faye's soft voice whispered: "You are here. You are ours."
I smiled faintly, a smile that held both sorrow and acceptance. I did not need the world. I did not need them.
And so I remained, a girl alone in her room, surrounded by a sky beyond the ceiling, a world beyond the stars, and friends who only existed in the mind. The city outside carried on, oblivious, and I let it.
Because this was my reality now.
And in the silence, I finally felt… at peace.