I fed others, that was my skill. That is my skill.

I knew how to hold out something warm and filling in hands that felt only the cold. I learned to blend care into the routine, to make love look like service, to turn my own hunger into something easily digestible. I became the one who knew how to take care of things. A moth circling the flame, offering myself to the light, content to flicker in and out of notice, never demanding to be the fire itself.

Quietly.

Without asking.

That’s what the world taught me. To give. To soften myself until I could be poured from one person to the next without spilling. To be useful without being seen. I wasn’t meant to hold anything for too long. Attention, affection, need. Just pass them on, keep them moving. Leave no trace. A whisper in the room that made things a little easier and then faded as if only a whispered thought. I spoke so softly that my voice became their own. The background melody that made others sound better, the harmony that didn’t ask to be remembered.

I learned to be small with practice. I’d hover at the edges of conversations, waiting to be invited in but never daring to step forward. I became fluent in staying out of the way. People liked me better that way. When I didn’t complicate the space, when I was reliable, helpful, unintrusive. A presence that felt more like presence than a person. I became like the pages of a well-worn book. Carrying stories but never the protagonist, valued for support, for reliability, but never the one who shapes the plot.

One day I knocked over something fragile. It wasn’t on purpose, or maybe it was. Between a contrite apology and a gagged confession. The truth spilled out, jagged and loud, pooling dark and wild on the floor. I wasn’t supposed to say it. I wasn’t supposed to want. The need crawled out of my throat before I could pull it back, and suddenly I was standing there, exposed, dripping with the mess I wasn’t supposed to make.

People looked at me like I’d broken some unspoken rule. You don’t ask for more when you’ve made a life out of giving. You don’t become the one in need when you’ve trained everyone to believe you’re fine. Quiet, humble, content. The shame hit hard, even a single moment of need could make me unworthy.

So I learned to apologize for it. To clean up the spill, piece the words back together in a way that made everyone safe again. I put the lid back on that wanting and told myself I was better off keeping it hidden. I went back to feeding others, back to being the calm in the room, the one who never made demands.

But I couldn’t forget the way it felt to let it out. The purity of truth when it wasn’t smothered in politeness. It was bitter, sharp, but it was mine. Opening a book and realizing the story wasn’t mine to control. Chaotic, real, and so much bigger than I’d imagined. It didn’t fit into the silence I’d built around myself.

Maybe that’s another reason why I write. To let the ink chase my thoughts, unapologetically. To spill myself into words that don’t pull back, don’t second-guess their right to exist. On the page, I can be loud, messy, too much. I can take up space without bracing for the recoil.

But even then, I realize I am pressed into paper. Flattened, contained. A story easily closed, set aside, forgotten. A voice that lingers only as long as someone keeps their eyes on the words. I pour myself out, but still, I’m something to be skimmed over, left on the shelf, gathering dust.

But I still hesitate, still wrap myself in that practiced calm, convincing myself that people like me better when I don’t take up space. I feed others because it’s easier than admitting I’m starving. I give because it feels safer than reaching. I stay quiet because the one time I didn’t, the world flinched.

Maybe one day I’ll let the ink spill again. Maybe one day I’ll let the truth roar and not rush to quiet it.

For now, I’m still here. Hands steady, words polite, pretending the hunger isn’t there at all. Because when I’m gone, I just want to know I didn’t go quietly. That somewhere, even if only on the page, I broke the silence and let myself be real. I want to know that the ache didn’t just stay locked inside me, that I didn’t spend my whole life folding myself to fit into a world that never held me right.

I just want to be more than a whisper. More than a name in the margins. I want to be something that stays. Etched into memory, not just ink on a page.

I want to linger long after I've stopped trying to prove I was ever here at all.