If life were a photograph, I wasn’t the focus, I was the blur in the background, the quiet shape that gave balance to the scene but never claimed the light.

At home, I moved like breath, unseen, necessary, but invisible. I did what needed to be done. Took up chores without being asked. Set the table. Cleared the dishes. Folded clothes that weren’t mine. No one told me to, and no one noticed when I did. My father would speak proudly of someone else’s child, their awards, their speeches, their brilliance. My name never surfaced in such conversations. My mother would sometimes glance at me like I had just arrived from nowhere, a stranger sitting at her dinner table. I didn’t blame them. They were busy. They loved me in their way. But their love felt like something I had to earn with silence.

I wanted someone, just one person...to look at me and think: She matters.

Loneliness isn’t loud. It doesn’t scream. It just waits. It waits until you’re washing dishes one evening in the same faded cotton kurta you’ve worn so many times it has started to lose its color at the sleeves, and realize no one’s texted you in three days. It waits until you scroll through your phone and there are no notifications except promotional messages. It waits until you say something in a group conversation and no one responds, and you pretend you didn’t mind because you weren’t really talking to anyone, just filling silence.