She always knew who she was. A shadow at the edge of the room, a whisper drowned beneath the weight of voices louder, brighter, bolder. The outcast. The forgotten. The girl who learned too young that love came with conditions, that affection had to be earned, that visibility was a privilege reserved for those who fit neatly into the expectations of others. She was not neat. She was not easy. And so, she learned to carve away the pieces of herself that did not belong.

She became a sculptor of her own existence, chiseling away at her identity until what remained was something palatable, something acceptable. She sanded down her rough edges, trimmed away the inconvenient parts, folded herself into the empty spaces left between others’ desires. She learned to be silent when silence was preferred, to nod when agreement was expected, to smile when smiling felt like a betrayal of everything she was. It was easier that way. Safer.

But safety came at a price.

She lost herself in the echoes of others’ expectations, in the constant moulding and remoulding of her identity. She became a collection of performances, a collage of borrowed smiles and rehearsed laughter. And with each role she played, with each mask she wore, the girl she had once been faded further into the background. Forgotten, abandoned, suffocated beneath the weight of trying to be enough.

She thought belonging would fill the hollowness inside her chest. That if she just played the part well enough, if she became the version of herself that others wanted, she would finally be chosen. Finally be kept. Finally be loved.

But the belonging she found was an illusion, a fragile thing that shattered the moment she faltered, the moment she failed to be exactly what they needed. And so she was left again, standing amidst the wreckage of all the people she had tried to be, realising that in chasing love, she had abandoned the only person who had ever truly been hers—herself.

And now, she wonders if it is too late. If the girl she left behind is still waiting for her somewhere, or if she has been lost to the years, dissolved into the nothingness of trying too hard, too long, to be someone else. She stands at the edge of a life that is not her own, staring into the abyss of all she has lost, feeling the sharp edges of regret pressing against her ribs.

But in the stillness, in the emptiness, something remains. A whisper, faint but insistent. A flicker of something long buried but not yet extinguished. Not the desperate, grasping hope that once begged for others to see her, to choose her. No, this is something different.

This is the hope that maybe, just maybe, she can choose herself.

That she can reach into the wreckage, sift through the shattered fragments of who she used to be, and begin again. That she can remember the sound of her own laughter when no one else is listening, the way her soul feels when it exists untouched by expectation.

That she is not beyond saving.
That she is still here, beneath the layers of pretence, waiting to be found.
She is me. And in the depths of me, I am she.
And maybe—just maybe—that is enough.