LOST

Chapter 1: Shadow in silence

The world was too quiet.

Not the comforting kind of silence — the dangerous kind. The kind that presses against your skin, cold and watching, like something just out of sight is waiting to finish what it started.

I opened my eyes, but the darkness didn’t lift. I was lying on a hard floor, damp and unfamiliar. The air was stale. Metallic. A single thought echoed in my head, over and over: Where am I?

But that was the wrong question.

The real question — the one I’d been running from for years — was Who am I?

My name… it came slowly. Not because I forgot it, but because I hated it. It carried too much weight. Every syllable was a memory, and every memory was a wound. And I wasn’t ready to bleed again.

I pushed myself up, hands trembling. My fingers grazed something sharp — broken glass. My reflection stared at me from a shattered mirror across the room. Half of my face was smeared with dried blood and dirt. The other half? Still hidden.

There was no door. At least, not one I could see. Just four cracked walls, a leaking ceiling, and a silence that felt... personal.

I wasn't supposed to be here.

But somehow, this place felt familiar. Not the room, but the feeling. Lost. Like I'd felt since I was thirteen, when the world shifted and everything I thought I knew — about family, love, even God — shattered like that mirror.

That was the first time I disappeared.

Not physically. Spiritually. Emotionally. I became a ghost in my own life. Smiling when I was supposed to, lying when I had to, and surviving by staying quiet.

But now, the past wasn’t buried anymore. It had followed me here.

And something told me this was only the beginning.

He never raised his hand to me.

He didn’t have to. His voice was enough — sharp, heavy, and final. Like a blade you never see coming, only feel after it’s already cut deep.

My father had a way of making you small without a single curse word. He didn’t yell much. He didn’t need to. The disappointment in his eyes was louder than any punishment. He believed in hard work, obedience, and silence — especially silence.

Dreams? He didn’t believe in those.

He said dreams were for people with soft hands and soft minds. People who couldn’t survive in the real world. So when I told him I wanted to create, to build, to be someone different — he laughed. Not the loud kind of laugh. Just that short, sharp exhale that says, Don’t be stupid.

I stopped telling him things after that.

Stopped asking questions. Stopped sharing my thoughts. I became the awkward kid — the one who sat in the corner of the room like furniture, who didn’t speak unless spoken to, who lived more in his head than in the world.

At school, I blended in — not out of fear, but out of habit. You learn to disappear when no one really sees you.

And at home… well, home wasn’t home. It was just a house filled with cold meals, heavy silences, and a family that had stopped trying a long time ago. My mother cried quietly at night. My siblings — when they were around — stayed busy enough not to notice. And me? I watched it all fall apart from the inside, like someone trapped behind the glass.

No one ever taught me what love was supposed to feel like.

But I knew what it wasn’t.

Sometimes I wonder — if I screamed, would anyone hear me?

Not now, not in this room. I mean back then, in the house with the peeling paint and the heavy silence. I used to sit in my bed at night, staring at the ceiling, holding the noise inside my chest like it was something sacred. Because silence… silence was survival.

I learned to swallow my words the way others swallowed pride — bitter and necessary.

I watched kids laugh at school, loud and free, like their worlds weren’t built on cracks. I envied them. Not because they had more — but because they didn’t carry ghosts around in their mouths.

I was the ghost. I was the silence in the room. I was the “fine” that never meant fine.

And no one ever asked if I was okay. They just assumed I was quiet by choice. That I liked being alone. That I didn’t need anything.

But I did.

I needed someone to see me — not just look at me. To hear the words I never said. To touch my shoulder and say, “You don’t have to carry all this alone.”

No one ever did.

So I carried it.

And now, in this place where time doesn't move and the air doesn't breathe, I can feel all of it crawling back through the cracks: the silence, the shame, the questions I buried so deep even God stopped asking.

I don’t know where I am. But maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe this is where I’ve always been —

Alone, unheard, and slowly forgetting who I was supposed to become.

But something’s different now.

For the first time in a long time… I want to remember.

Not because the memories are kind.

They’re not.

But because forgetting is a slow death. And I’ve died quietly for far too long.

I close my eyes, and at first, it’s all darkness.

But then — faint and fragile — a flicker of a hallway.

Old peeling paint.

The sound of a door creaking open.

The bitter scent of stale porridge in the morning and the echo of my father’s footsteps, always just loud enough to remind us who owned the silence.

That house wasn’t home.

It was a box — walls wrapped in fear and names we weren’t allowed to call each other.

My brother…

He thrived.

The golden child. The achiever. The one who always seemed to know exactly what to say, how to act, where to stand to catch our father’s rare approval.

I never hated him.

But sometimes I envied how effortlessly he existed.

While I — I was always shrinking, folding into corners, hiding my thoughts between lines I dared not speak aloud.

They said I was “just sensitive.”

Too quiet.

Too strange.

But I wasn't strange. I was just… lost. And no one came looking.

At school, I was the boy at the back of the class with a thousand untold stories scratched into the edges of his notebook.

While others raised their hands, I held my tongue.

While others played and laughed, I studied faces, studied silences — looking for someone who might see me, even if just for a moment.

But no one did.

And so I wrote.

I wrote when no one was watching.

I wrote because it was the only time I felt real.

Each word was a whisper from the version of me that still believed in something — anything.

There was a tree near the back of the school.

Big. Broken. Bent like it had seen too much wind.

I used to sit under it, tracing my words into worn-out pages, dreaming of a life where stories mattered.

Sometimes, I’d imagine myself older.

Free.

Somewhere far from home, holding a book with my name on it — telling my story to people who cared.

I held on to that dream like it was the only light in the fog.

And now, here in this stillness, I realize it was never about being seen by everyone.

It was about being seen by someone.

Just one person.

Someone who’d read my story and say: “I get it. I’ve felt that too.”

That’s why I’m writing this now.

Not for fame.

Not for pity.

But because if someone, somewhere, is sitting in the same kind of silence I once knew, maybe this will help them believe they’re not crazy. They’re not broken.

They’re just… human.

Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if someone had asked me what I was thinking back then.

Would I have said it?

Would I have had the words?

Or would I have just stared back with those tired eyes of mine — the ones too used to hiding behind forced nods and fake “I’m fines”?

Maybe I wouldn’t have said anything.

But maybe… maybe I would’ve just cried.

Not the kind of crying that makes noise.

The quiet kind.

The kind that fills your throat and sits in your chest like a rock you can’t swallow.

I’ve always been good at pretending.

Pretending I was okay.

Pretending I didn’t hear the disappointment in my father’s voice.

Pretending I wasn’t affected when my mother stopped asking me how my day was.

Pretending I wasn’t hurt when my brother laughed about how soft I was.

But I was soft.

And I used to hate that about myself.

I thought being soft meant I’d never make it.

That I was weak.

That something was broken in me that couldn’t be fixed.

But now… now I think maybe the softness was the only part of me that ever survived.

It’s what made me feel.

It’s what kept me from becoming like him.

It’s what taught me to listen — really listen — to the things people don’t say out loud.

There’s strength in softness.

Only, no one ever taught me that.

I had to learn it the hard way — through the nights I cried into my pillow, the pages I filled with things I couldn't say aloud, and the way I started to love silence not because it was peaceful, but because I made peace with it.

And in that silence, I met myself.

Not the version my father tried to shape with fear.

Not the version my school labeled as quiet and strange.

But the version I buried somewhere between heartbreak and hope.

That version still hurts.

But he’s learning to stand.

He’s learning that being unseen doesn’t mean you’re unworthy.

That being unheard doesn’t mean you have nothing to say.

That being lost… doesn’t mean you can’t find your way.

I don’t know what comes next.

I still feel afraid.

I still feel small.

But now I also feel… honest.

And maybe that’s where it starts.

Not with being found by someone else —

But with finally choosing to find yourself.

One truth at a time.

One word at a time.

Even if no one listens.

Even if no one claps.

Even if the world stays quiet.

I will still write.

Because in the end, these words might be the only part of me I’ve never apologized for.

And that means something.