CHAPTER 7 :-
I am fourteen now.
People say I am mature for my age. They don't know that maturity was forced on me long before I understood what it meant. They don't know that after my mother died, I stopped crying entirely.
Before her death, I cried only in front of her. She was the only place where I allowed myself to break without fear. After she was gone, that place disappeared. And when there is nowhere safe to cry, you learn how to endure instead.
Whatever came after—failures, fear, disappointment—I bore it quietly. Not because it didn't hurt, but because I had already faced something worse than anything I could explain. Pain stopped surprising me. I learned to measure it differently.
Even now, when something hurts, I don't cry. Not because I am numb, but because I carry something heavier inside me, something without words. Some losses cannot be explained. They can only be felt.
Now, in the present, I am preparing to leave this house. Not angrily, not impulsively, but deliberately. I have decided to move to another state for my further studies, to live in a hostel where distance might finally give me space to breathe. This is not abandonment in return. It is survival. I am not running away from my past, but I cannot continue growing inside the place where so much of me learned how to stay silent. Leaving feels necessary, even if it feels heavy. For the first time, I am choosing myself.
END NOTE
To be continued and updated as the author's life goes on.