From a young age, I knew something was different in me.
The other girls—they glittered like sunlight on water, magnetic, effortless, their laughter finding one another like birds in flight.
And me—I rehearsed my existence before stepping into the world. I sculpted myself in silence, afraid the unpolished truth was never enough.
So I learned to dim. I became the quiet shadow that let others shine brighter, their brilliance reflecting in the space I surrendered.
But oh—how I wished light came easily to me. How I wished to burn without effort, to blaze without fear.
Instead, I tried. Tried so hard—to be effortlessly kind, to be effortlessly wise, to be delicately feminine, to be flawlessly beautiful, to be fiercely independent, to be endlessly present, to be… perfect.
And now, I am weary of the trying. My hands ache from molding myself. My spirit trembles under the weight of becoming what was never asked of me—only imagined, only demanded by my own aching heart.
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