The Girl Who Forgot How To Be A Child Poem by New Girl Dark NewGirlDark

I do not remember a childhood filled with laughter and carefree days. I remember silence. I remember doors closing too hard, voices breaking in the middle of the night, and the constant feeling that something was about to fall apart.
While other children learned to play, I learned to watch.
I learned to read eyes before books, moods before stories, and storms before the rain arrived. I became an expert at feeling what everyone else felt, as if the peace of the house depended on it, as if my own safety lived inside their emotions.
I was only a little girl, yet I carried worries far too heavy for my small hands.
I tried to mend arguments I did not create, soothe wounds I could not heal, and hold together hearts that weighed more than my own. I hid my tears so no one would worry, buried my fears beneath a smile, and wore bravery like a borrowed dress.
What a cruel rhyme, what a silent crime.
While I cared for everyone, nobody noticed I needed care too.
While I dried tears with devotion, I learned to live with my own sorrow and emotion.
While I offered understanding and light, I disappeared a little more each night.
And so I grew.
Not among games, but responsibilities.
Not among fairy tales, but realities.
Not among comfort, but necessities.
People called me mature, responsible, wise beyond my years. They admired my strength without realizing that sometimes strength is only a wound learning how to survive.
Because the truth is, I was never strong.
I was tired.
Tired of listening.
Tired of carrying.
Tired of believing that everyone else's happiness depended on me.
Yet I kept trying, because I had learned that my worth lived in helping, fixing, saving, giving always giving until there was almost nothing left of me.
The years passed, but that little girl never truly left.
She still lives somewhere inside my heart.
She is the one who feels guilty for choosing herself.
The one who worries about everyone before she worries about her own well-being.
The one who still reaches for burdens that were never hers to bear.
The one who thought love had to be earned through sacrifice and care.
But slowly she is learning another truth.
She was never meant to carry every storm.
She was never meant to be everyone's shelter while crumbling alone.
She deserved protection, not obligation.
She deserved laughter, not desperation.
She deserved childhood, not preparation.
Sometimes I think of that little girl so quiet, so sensitive, so frightened and brave at the same time.
And if I could speak to her now, I would kneel beside her and whisper:
'You do not have to save anyone to be loved.
You do not have to be strong all the time.
You do not have to carry the weight of the world.'
Because behind every child who grows up too soon, there is often an invisible story, an unnamed sadness, a stolen piece of innocence.
And though time cannot return what was lost, something still remains to be found:
The right to care for myself with the same love I spent a lifetime giving away.
@newgirldark