Between the Lines of Silence

I was a girl in her twenties, not quite lost but not quite found either. Life felt like a mess of tangled thoughts, like shoelaces knotted in the dark. There was no map, no guiding star—only questions I was too tired to ask and answers no one ever seemed to have.

At home, things weren’t perfect. We were a full house—two brothers, one sister, and parents who were... well, parents. My mother—strong, sensitive, and always watching—believed she was losing me. Maybe she was right. Our relationship had frayed over the last two years, like a thread that had been pulled too tightly and finally snapped. I saw the worry in her eyes, the unspoken fear that her daughter was slipping through her fingers. But what could I do when I didn’t even understand myself?

My father stayed quiet most of the time, siding with my mother in a way that made me feel small, like a child again. He wasn’t cruel, but his silence was louder than any argument.

And then there were my brothers. The older one, soft-hearted and innocent, like someone out of place in this world—he and I were... okay. Not close, not distant. Just... siblings. We didn’t talk much, but we didn't argue either, and sometimes that was enough.

But the younger one—he was different. Always the favorite. Always the “good” one. My mother’s shadow, her loyal soldier, her ever-watching informant. If I so much as breathed wrong near Mummy’s phone, he would rush to report it. I hated that. I hated how he always made me the villain in stories I never got to write. And my little sister? She adored him. Her heart, it seemed, belonged to him more than to anyone else.

I couldn’t blame her. Love doesn’t choose sides like we do. But it hurt. It hurt to see the one person I felt closest to looking up to the one I couldn't stand.

And then there was my friend—my neighbor. She always had something to prove. Always acting like she was better, louder, more... something. Maybe it was her way of coping. Or maybe she just liked the attention. Either way, I never really felt like I could breathe around her.

In our house, we only had two phones. One was Mummy’s, the other Papa’s. And Papa, well, he never shared his. If I asked, the answer was always a no wrapped in silence. So I used Mummy’s phone when I had to—but even that came at a cost. The moment I touched it, my younger brother would be there, accusing eyes and an eager tongue, ready to twist the story and feed it to Mummy like a spoonful of truth. I don’t like him. I don’t even try to.

But what do you do when you’re born into a story you didn’t write? You don’t get to choose your siblings. You don’t get to hit “restart.” You just learn to breathe in the spaces between arguments. You learn to find small corners of peace where no one can see you cry.

Some days, I wonder if I’m the problem. Maybe I’m too sensitive. Too cold. Too distant. Maybe I built walls so high that even love got tired of climbing.

But on other days, I think I’m just... surviving. Like a plant growing in a crack in the concrete—bending toward sunlight even when the world doesn’t give it much.

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