CHAPTER 5 :-
By the time I was eleven, silence had become something I practiced deliberately.
I learned how to read moods before words were spoken. I noticed how small changes in tone could shift an entire room. I learned that reacting too much made things worse, and reacting too little made you invisible. Invisibility, I discovered, was safer.
At school, I appeared calm and well-behaved. Teachers praised my maturity. Classmates thought I was reserved. No one saw how carefully everything was calculated. No one saw how much energy it took to stay composed.
At home, I measured everything. My words. My movements. My expressions. I learned when to leave the room, when to stay quiet, when to agree without argument. Nothing was openly wrong, and that made it harder to explain why I felt constantly tense.
There were no clear reasons to complain. No visible wounds. Just an unspoken understanding that I needed to manage myself.
Children expect protection.I stopped expecting anything.
I grew responsible early, not because I was encouraged to, but because no one else was going to do it for me. I watched over my brother. I learned how to handle things alone. I became emotionally self-sufficient long before I understood what that meant.
Looking back, that was the year I stopped feeling like a child.