I had stopped needing them. It wasn't something I consciously decided; it just happened. Like the slow erosion of a mountain, you don't realize it until one day, there's just nothing left of the rock. My parents' absence was a constant, something I had learned to live with long before I even realized it was happening. They weren't cruel. No. They weren't monsters. They were just… lost.
It wasn't that they didn't care; it was that they didn't know how to care. The gaps between us, the spaces where words should have been, had grown so vast over the years that even if they tried to fill them now, it felt like I'd become a different person—someone who didn't know how to accept them back.
And yet, there they were, trying.
My mother, always so quiet, always so distant, suddenly asking about my day as if she hadn't spent years not asking. Her eyes, though… they were different. There was something there that hadn't been there before. An unfamiliar softness, but it wasn't enough. It felt like a wall between us, built by years of silence, and no matter how much she tried, it wasn't going to come down so easily.
"You're doing well in school," my father said, one evening. I could feel the weight of his words hanging in the air, heavy with the years of regret I didn't want to acknowledge. I hadn't heard him say those words in so long, maybe never. I wanted to say something, to tell him I was fine, that I didn't need his praise, but I couldn't. The words stuck in my throat. I didn't know if I even wanted it.
Their attempts felt hollow. Like they were trying to put pieces back together, but they didn't know what the picture was supposed to look like anymore.
I sat there, at the table, my fork poised midair, staring at the food in front of me. I couldn't eat. I couldn't taste it. I wanted to scream, to tell them that this wasn't how it worked. That you couldn't just erase the years that had already passed. That I wasn't the same person who used to crave their approval. I wasn't the same person who needed their attention to feel whole.
But instead, I sat in silence, and so did they. The air between us felt thick, oppressive. I could feel the weight of their gaze, but I couldn't return it. I didn't know how to let them back in. The truth was, I didn't want them to. Because if I let them back in, if I let them fill the space where their absence had been, I'd have to confront everything they had never said. Everything that had built up in the silence between us.
I wanted to break the quiet, to shatter the distance that had settled between us like dust, but I didn't know how. So, I said nothing.
Later, that night, after dinner had long passed and the house had settled into its usual stillness, my mother handed me a plate. She didn't say anything this time. She just gave me a plate of food, the same way she always did. But this time, when I took it from her hands, I felt something—something unfamiliar.
"Do you want to talk?" she asked, her voice soft, barely above a whisper.
I looked at her. Really looked at her. I wanted to say something. I wanted to scream at her, tell her how much her silence had hurt me, how much their absence had shaped me into someone I wasn't sure I even recognized anymore. But instead, I just shook my head. I couldn't do it. I couldn't open that door.
She nodded, her expression unreadable. And for a moment, I thought she might understand.
But then I remembered something. Something I had almost forgotten: It wasn't her fault. It wasn't their fault. They had their own pain, their own brokenness, and I had my own. We were all just trying to survive, trying to make sense of the wreckage we'd all been left with.
I had stopped waiting for them to save me. I had stopped hoping they would fix me. I didn't need them to. I had learned how to keep going. I had learned to survive without them.
But that didn't mean I was okay.
The truth was, I was more broken than I cared to admit. More than I was willing to show. And maybe, just maybe, they were too.
When my father spoke again, it was in a low voice. "You don't have to do it alone," he said.
I froze. I didn't know how to respond. I had spent so long being alone, being self-sufficient, that the idea of letting someone else in felt foreign, like a muscle I hadn't used in years. But I could feel the tremor in his voice, the faint trace of regret in his words.
For a moment, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that maybe they could change, that they could learn to love me the way I needed. But I didn't know how to trust it. I didn't know if I even could anymore.
So, I said nothing. I just turned away, and in the silence that followed, I realized that maybe, just maybe, this was the hardest thing I had ever had to do.
Because it wasn't just about surviving anymore. It was about learning how to let go of all the things I had built around myself, the walls I had put up to keep me safe. It was about learning how to breathe again, how to let someone else in.
But I wasn't ready for that yet. Not with them. Not with anyone.
---