Do you know what it feels like to parent yourself? To wake up before dawn not because someone taught you responsibility, but because no one else bothered to care?

I do. I wake, and I feed myself, dress myself, scold myself, comfort myself—because the ones who were supposed to do it never show up.

And then I parent my siblings. Not because I chose to, but because survival isn’t a choice when the adults are absent in every meaningful way. I tuck them in. I wipe their tears. I pretend I am someone I am not, just to keep them from breaking.

And the walls—I swear, the walls themselves have better hearing than my parents. I shout. I cry. I beg. I demand attention. And it is like speaking to a stone. A cold, unyielding stone that will not answer, will not move, will not care.

Ego. That’s what they have. Ego wrapped around their chest like armor, impenetrable and suffocating. They never apologize. Never admit when they are wrong. Even in the face of destruction, even in the face of chaos they created, they walk away untouchable.

And I—me—I am left cleaning up their mess. I am left teaching myself empathy while they wear indifference like a crown. I am the adult in a home of children and ghosts.

Neglect. That’s the word. But it feels heavier than words. You cannot name the loneliness of needing someone and finding only emptiness, only the faint echo of “I don’t care.”

Manipulation, too. Love traded for obedience, attention bought with fear. And yet I—stubborn, defiant—I refuse to kneel entirely. So I raise myself higher than they ever intended, sharper than they ever wanted.

And still, I parent. I fix their mistakes for my siblings, I shield them from consequences, I soothe their confusion. I am a shadow adult in a house of hollow adults, a caretaker for children who should not have to be cared for by someone like me.

Violence doesn’t always leave marks. It lingers in words. In glares. In the sharp cut of criticism. And every time it lands, I bend, I hold, I endure. My siblings lean on me, because the ones meant to love us are incapable.

Favors are never fair. Love is never equal. And I become a broker of peace. I negotiate survival in a home ruled by ego, by silence, by anger that never ends with apologies.

And the silence… it is deafening. Conversations turn into echoes, echoes into walls, walls into voids. You speak, you beg, you plead—and it returns nothing. You are a ghost inhabiting a house of ghosts.

Secrets pile up. Heavy, suffocating. I carry them for myself. I carry them for my siblings. And still, they are silent about their own. And I? I learn to hide beneath a mask that never slips, to smile while bleeding inside.

I wake every day before anyone else. I sleep last. I parent. I clean. I fix. I protect. And I never, ever, ask for credit. Because they are incapable of giving it. And if I dared, it would be dismissed, ignored, or mocked.

I am tired. I am sharp. I am clever. I am wary. I am all the things I had to become to survive. But do they see me? No. Do they care? Never. Apologies? Ha. A foreign language spoken by strangers in the same skin.

I have learned that silence is my weapon. Anger is my shield. My siblings’ safety is my sword. And ego… ego is theirs, but it fuels me. Every slight, every cold disregard, every lack of apology—fuel.

I laugh at the irony: the ones who should raise you, leave you broken; the ones who should heal, leave you guarding wounds; the ones who should apologize, leave you angry, resentful, undefeated.

And yet, in their absence, in their negligence, I grow. I am stronger. I am self-sufficient. I am a parent, a child, a soldier, a shadow—all at once.

I watch my siblings sleep and know that if I do not stand, they will fall. And if I do not speak, they will never be heard. And I… I will never forget.

So no. I will not bow. I will not apologize for being alive in a house that teaches survival as punishment. I will not kneel to ego that cannot bend, to walls that cannot listen.

Because in the end… I parent myself. I parent my siblings. I raise us all. And the world may crumble around me—but we will survive.