being left in the past

courage space

The following weeks were filled with conversations we never had the courage to have before. My siblings found their voices too. We told her we were scared. We told her we were watching her suffer. We told her we loved her too much to pretend everything was fine.

Life changed too fast. One day we were surviving, the next we were sinking. The economy twisted itself like a monster that fed on the poor. Jobs disappeared. Food became a luxury. Shelter became a privilege. The world kept moving forward, but it moved without us.

When my mother lost her job, it was as though the earth shifted beneath our feet, and we fell into a hole too deep to climb. She tried to hide it from us, tucking the fear behind her smile, sweeping her tears with the back of her hand, pretending everything was still within her control. But children sense things more deeply than adults ever admit.

We saw how her shoulders dropped when she thought no one was looking.

We heard her breath tremble at night.

We watched her stare at the empty food shelf as though hoping something might appear.

We drifted into a life we did not recognize. A life where we could not afford a place to sleep. A life where mornings and nights blended into a single struggle. A life where excuses became comfort because facing the truth was too heavy.

Our world became a place where hope felt like a stranger. Everywhere we went, we saw people trying to survive on empty promises. Children like us are barefoot, wandering, hungry, trying to figure out why the world treated us as though we were invisible. Many of them were homeless, some orphaned, some abandoned by parents who disappeared under the pressure of poverty.

To live among hopeless children is to understand the cruelty of the world early.

We shared our streets with kids whose eyes had aged long before their bodies did. Kids who understood survival more than they understood the alphabet. Kids who had lost their names because no one had spoken to them in years.

My siblings never spoke about their struggles. We had inherited silence from our mother. We carried our burdens quietly. We learned to swallow pain whole, without chewing it, without naming it.

Years later, I realized they had gone through things they should never have faced. Things children shouldn’t even know exist. But we never talked about it. Not because we didn’t trust each other, but because words were too heavy to lift.

But kids are strange, they smile even when life breaks them. They play even when the future scares them. They find joy in things adults would ignore. Maybe that’s why we survived. Because children have hearts that bend without breaking.

Pain is a patient visitor. It does not knock. It enters, sits, and watches. It does not ask permission. It grows roots in the corners of your life until you no longer remember what life looked like without it. We lived inside that kind of pain, the kind without limits, the kind that did not pause to give us air. The nights were the worst. Long, heavy, unforgiving nights where hunger carved our stomachs like something alive. Hunger is not just emptiness; it is noise. It is the sound of your insides crying, the ache crawling up your spine, the dizziness that feels like the world shifting beneath your feet. We learned to sleep through hunger, but sleep never came peacefully. It came like surrender.

We lay close to each other during those nights, our bodies thin and shaking, our minds drifting into fear. We whispered stories to distract ourselves from the truth. Sometimes we hummed songs our mother used to sing when life was still bearable. Sometimes we simply stared at the ceiling, listening to our stomachs speak louder than our voices.

One afternoon, a boy we used to play football with died in his sleep because he hadn’t eaten in days. His name was Musa. He was fourteen. He used to smile with all his teeth, even when life gave him no reason. His laughter used to bounce across the street like music. And then one day, he was gone, swallowed by the same hunger that haunted us.

We wanted to love, to comfort each other, to keep our unity strong, but hunger makes you fragile, sharp, impatient. Love felt like a luxury we could not afford. We cared for each other deeply, but caring felt heavy, painful.

We found friends who understood us without explanation. Kids like us, bruised by the world, but still alive. We played together, shared food whenever anyone had any. Sometimes we ate from one plate, passing spoons around like treasure. Those small meals tasted better than feasts because they came from people who had nothing but still gave something.

We didn’t judge each other for looking unkempt, for wearing torn clothes, for smelling like dust and sweat. We were all struggling. We were all mirrors of the same pain.

Our mother fought harder than any soldier I have ever read about. Every morning, she stood up even when her legs trembled, even when her heart was empty, even when she hadn’t eaten herself. She walked miles under harsh sun, knocking on office doors, asking for work that wasn’t there.

Sometimes she would come home late because she was ashamed to return early without success. She would force a smile when she saw us. She would say, “Tomorrow will be better.” But her voice broke on the last word. And we felt it, the fear she tried so hard to hide.

Our mother always said,

“The strong must live.”

And those words stayed with us, echoing in our minds like a drumbeat.