unwanted child

Chapter 2

Childhood is often painted as a time of innocence, laughter, and discovery. But for her, it was a landscape of silence, filled with long corridors of loneliness and a constant awareness that she did not belong.

At school, she was quiet. Other children came with neatly braided hair, clean clothes, and parents who kissed them goodbye at the gate. She arrived alone, often in hand-me-down dresses that didn’t fit quite right, the fabric faded from too many washes. Teachers noticed her but rarely remembered her. She was the girl who sat at the back, head bowed over her notebook, answering questions softly only when called upon.

At home, her invisibility was even heavier. Her siblings teased her, calling her “the extra one” or “the mistake.” Her mother scolded her more often than the rest, as though her very presence was an irritation. Her father hardly spoke to her at all, except to issue commands—“Fetch that,” “Move aside,” “Don’t touch.”

Sometimes she wondered if she was born with something wrong inside her—something that made people turn away. Why else, she thought, would no one want her?

But there were moments, fleeting and fragile, that gave her reason to keep going. She loved reading, even if the books she had were secondhand, their covers torn and pages scribbled on. She would sit beneath the single lamp in the house late at night, tracing words with her finger, building worlds inside her mind where she was no longer unwanted.

Her imagination became her shield. When her brothers locked her out of their games, she invented her own. She spoke to the wind, to the stars, to the shadows of trees at dusk. They did not answer, but they listened in a way no one else seemed to.

Yet the shadows of neglect were not easy to escape. Hunger gnawed at her often, as meals were given first to her siblings. She learned to eat slowly, to make a small portion last. She learned to hide tears, because crying only earned her sharp words and scorn.

One evening, when she was eight, she asked her mother a question she had rehearsed for days. “Mama… do you love me?”

Her mother froze, the pot she was stirring clattering against the stove. For a moment, the woman’s face softened, as though the words had pierced something deep. But then she shook her head and muttered, “Don’t ask foolish things. Just finish your chores.”

The girl turned away, cheeks burning with shame. That night she buried her face in her pillow, pressing hard to muffle her sobs. She didn’t ask again.

And yet, through the pain, she carried within her a fragile flame. A determination, though she could not name it, was beginning to grow. She told herself that maybe, just maybe, the world outside her small town held something better. That perhaps beyond the walls of her house, beyond the stares of those who dismissed her, there was a place where she could belong.

But childhood is a long road, and hope is not always enough to carry one through. There were days when despair weighed so heavily on her small shoulders that she wondered if disappearing would be easier. On those days, she reminded herself of the books she read, the stories of heroes and heroines who overcame hardships greater than her own. If they could survive, perhaps she could too.

By the time she reached twelve, she was no longer the little girl crying on the steps. She had learned how to move quietly, how to endure without complaint, how to build strength in silence. But she was also carrying scars invisible to the eye—scars that whispered she was unworthy of love.

Still, somewhere deep inside, a part of her refused to believe that rejection was her destiny. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know when, but she held on to one fragile truth: life had to mean more than this.

And so she kept walking, day by day, through the shadows of her childhood, searching for a light she could call her own.