I didn’t say I was coming.

I don’t even know how I got here.

You must have been waiting though.

After losing two before me,

my arrival must have felt like mercy finally answered.

They insulted you.

They mocked you.

They said your womb was empty.

His family did.

And you stayed.

He stayed too.

Maybe love held you together.

Maybe pride did.

Maybe pain did.

Then I arrived.

A proof.

A victory.

A child you could finally show the world.

I didn’t come to leave.

I came to stay.

I even called five others after me... little bodies filling rooms,

little mouths calling you “Mummy.”

But somewhere along the way,

I became the pain.

Not because I broke things.

Not because I rebelled wildly, but because I wanted to be myself.

I didn’t read like the others.

I didn’t behave like the favorite.

I asked questions. I felt deeply. I reacted loudly.

You were present.

School fees paid.

Food on the table.

Clothes washed.

But presence is not the same as connection.

You preferred the one who faced books, the one who made you proud in public.. the one who required less explanation.

And me?

I became the “why can’t you be like…” child.

Words started shaping me.

“You’re too stubborn.”

“You talk too much.”

“Why are you like this?”

I began shrinking in places you could not see.

I learned that love could be measured.

That approval could be withdrawn.

That silence was safer than expression.

You survived humiliation from the world.

I survived humiliation, comparison, and belittling at home.. and if you are reading this as a parent,

pause.

Did you raise children? Or did you raise expectations?

Did you listen? Or did you correct?

Because some children do not act out.

They act fine.

They grow up successful, functional, smiling.

But somewhere inside them, lives a child

still trying to earn equal softness.

I didn’t say I was coming.

But I am here.

And little me... I see you now.

You were never the difficult one.

You were the honest one.

The expressive one.

The child who refused to disappear quietly.

They called you stubborn

because you had a voice.

They called you dramatic

because you had emotions.

They called you the problem

because you would not become convenient.

You were not the pain.

You were the mirror.

And sometimes, what hurts parents most is not a disobedient child... 

It is a child, who reflects what they refuse to confront, in themselves.

If my existence unsettled you,

it was never because I was broken.

It was because I would not bend into the version of me, that made you comfortable.

I didn’t come to compete, I didn’t come to perform, I didn’t come to earn breath.

I came as I was.

And if that felt like pain

Then maybe, the pain was truth.