Healing hearts

the girl in the shadow She sat in the corner of her room, the dim glow of the moon casting long shadows on the walls. The air felt heavy, thick with emotions she couldn't escape. She was drowning in a sea of self-doubt, insecurity, and pain—yet no one seemed to notice. Her family was whole, yet it felt broken in ways she couldn't explain. Her parents were always too busy, too distracted to see the cracks forming in her. Her older sister was distant, caught up in her own world, leaving her alone with the voices in her head that whispered she wasn’t enough. At school, things weren’t any better. Friends came and went, their loyalty fragile as glass. One moment, they were laughing with her, the next, they were whispering behind her back. She felt like an outsider, trapped in a cycle of fake smiles and forced conversations. And then there was the pain—the only thing that felt real. A blade against her skin, a sharp contrast to the numbness inside. It was her secret, her escape, her way of controlling something when everything else was spiraling. She longed for someone to notice, to care, to ask if she was okay and truly mean it. But every time she opened her mouth, the words got stuck in her throat. So she suffered in silence, hoping that maybe one day, the darkness wouldn’t feel so suffocating.