My name is Hazel. Sometimes I wonder if I was ever truly welcomed into this world.
My parents loved me—oh, they loved me more than life itself. My mother's arms were my first home, my father's voice the first lullaby I knew. To them, I was their princess, their little miracle.
But love is a strange thing. It doesn't always flow through every branch of a family tree.
My father's parents never wanted me. My mother's parents never cared. To them, I was invisible. Just another child who existed, not one to be cherished.
There was only one person outside my parents who looked at me differently—my great-grandfather, my mother's grandfather. They say his eyes softened whenever he saw me. They say he carried me like I was a treasure. They say he blessed me with all the love my tiny heart could hold.
But fate was cruel. I was only two when he left this world, and with him vanished the only love I might have known beyond my parents' embrace.
So I grew up with two truths. Inside my home, I was everything. Outside of it, I was nothing.
And as I got older, I learned something even harsher—sometimes the world doesn't care about the love you carry within. It only cares about how you look, about how you fit into its narrow idea of beauty.
I wasn't the fair-skinned girl with glossy hair and perfect features. I was Hazel—the dusky one. The girl people dismissed without even knowing her.
The girl who wanted to be loved.
The girl who wanted to be seen.