I have friends.
That’s what I tell myself when I sit with them,
pretending to belong.
But they don’t see me.
Not really.
To them, I’m the quiet one,
The innocent one,
The dumb one.
The child playing at adulthood,
Too naive to understand the world they walk.
They think I don’t notice how they talk down to me,
The way they smile when I speak of my dreams.
Like I’m too soft to notice
the sharpness of their words.
But I am not a child,
And I am not innocent.
I am a girl who learned
How to smile through the ache,
How to laugh through the hollow,
How to pretend that I don’t feel the walls closing in.
They think I’m easy to fool,
That I won’t catch the way they roll their eyes
When I speak of the things I love.
The toys that make me smile,
The lines of books that cling to my soul,
The songs I bury myself in &
the piano and violin melodies
that feel like home in a world too loud.
All dismissed, waved off, ridiculed,
Labeled childish, unworthy of their time.
Like my joy is an inconvenience to their lives.
But I notice.
I notice everything.
I notice how they’ve built me in their minds—
A fragile thing,
easy to break, easy to ignore.
They have no idea what it’s like to be me.
They don’t know how my hands shake
When I hold back tears in front of them.
They don’t know how many words I swallow
Just to keep the peace,
How many pieces of myself I’ve hidden
To make them more comfortable.
They laugh at me.
Not with me.
They think I don’t see it,
That I don’t feel it—
The subtle cruelty hidden in their jokes,
The way they twist my softness into stupidity.
I am but a pitiful inclusion
of their conversations.
A mere placeholder in their group.
A shadow they barely notice
Until they need to feel smarter, stronger, better.
And I let them.
Because it’s easier to stay quiet,
To let them believe they’re right,
Than to fight against the weight of their indifference.
In the end, I shrink.
I fold myself into something smaller,
Something quieter,
Until I am nothing more than the version they created—
A shadow of myself,
Easy to laugh at, easy to control.
But inside, I’m screaming.
Inside, I’m crying.
Because I don’t know how to explain
What it feels like to be surrounded
And still feel like the loneliest person in the room.
They think they know me.
But how could they?
They’ve never looked past the smile I force,
Never wondered why my hands tremble,
Why my breath falters,
Why my voice sometimes dies in my throat.
I am surrounded by people,
But I am alone in a way I can’t explain.
Alone in the crowd,
Alone in their presence,
Alone in the silence I hide behind.
I sit there, smiling, nodding,
surrounded by their voices,
Their laughter, their noise.
And yet I am alone.
Because they will never understand
the weight I carry,
the weight of a heart that beats in isolation.
I pretend like I don’t care
When they say I’m childish,
That my love for vanilla makes me small.
But inside, I am clawing at my own skin,
Begging for someone to see me—
Not the version of me they created,
But the real me.
Everyone likes vanilla.
I like it a bit more.
But they don’t get it, do they?
How something so simple
can mean everything when you feel so ******* lost.
They mock me for it—
Like it’s some childish obsession,
Like it’s a flaw that I’m drawn to the soft,
The pure,
The things that make me feel whole
In a world that’s always trying to tear me apart.
They look at my quiet smile, my careful hands,
And slap a label on my skin: innocent.
Like I’m some sticker they can peel off,
Stick wherever they please
and forget.
But I am not what they think I am.
I am not a word whispered behind cupped hands,
Not the soft thing they’ve mistaken for weak
I love stickers.
Bright, bold, beautiful things
That I press into notebooks and corners of my world,
Little pieces of colour in the chaos I can’t control.
But I am not a sticker.
I am not something they can pin down,
Label me whatever they ******* want to.
I am what I am,
It is what it is,
so deal with it or leave.
If the consequence of me being me
is loneliness,
then so be it.
I am many things,
But I am not their innocent doll.
I am not a joke,
I am not their fool.
I am not just a sticker.
I am not just their label.
I am a mosaic of cracks and scars,
and one day, I will tear these labels from my skin
and show them the strength they never saw.
Who knows,
maybe they might finally realise,
why hurricanes are named after people.
Too bad they’ll never take the time
to know that.
They’re too busy talking over me,
too busy writing their own stories
on the pages of my silence.
I don’t need their pity.
I don’t need their approval.
But God, sometimes I wish
just one of them would stop
and look at me long enough
to see the storm I carry,
to hear the screams I choke back every day.
Because I am tired of being invisible.
Tired of being their afterthought.
Tired of being underestimated,
of being seen but never known.
I am tired of sitting among friends
and still feeling utterly, completely,
Alone.
And I inevitably find myself wondering —
Will anyone ever know this loneliness?
Will anyone ever stop long enough
to see the girl who hides behind this smile?
Or am I doomed to disappear,
lost in a crowd that never bothered to look closer?
~written for my best friend. (Female POV)
If you’re reading this, I want you to know that you are understood.