Page One: The Bad Person

Dear Diary,

I don’t know when it started. I just remember at some point I began to believe I was the problem.

No one ever said it directly. No one ever called me difficult or wrong. It was never that obvious. It was more subtle than that. A look that stayed a little too long. A sigh after I left a room. Conversations that felt lighter when I wasn’t part of them.

Nothing I could prove. But it was enough for me to start believing it anyway.

I was sixteen when the wardrobe incident happened.

My mother had replaced my old wardrobe with a new one. It was better in every way. Clean, polished, expensive-looking. The kind of thing people are supposed to be happy about.

But I wasn’t.

My old wardrobe had been worn and uneven, but it was mine. I stood in the doorway staring at the new one and felt something inside me tighten. I didn’t understand why it mattered so much, but it did.

After that, something in me changed.

I started skipping meals. At first it didn’t feel serious. Just small things—refusing food, saying I wasn’t hungry. But it continued until it became easier not to eat than to start again.

Then it got worse.

I started hurting myself. Not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted something to change. I wanted someone to notice me properly. Not just as someone passing through the house, but as someone who was actually struggling.

It worked.

My mother noticed. She apologised. Gently. Like she was stepping carefully around something she didn’t fully understand.

And she didn’t understand.

I knew that even then.

But I accepted the apology anyway, because for a short moment, it felt like I mattered.

Later, I realised it was never about the wardrobe. It was about wanting to be seen without having to fall apart first.

Life didn’t get quieter after that. If anything, it got louder. Everything kept moving—school, people, conversations—like nothing was wrong. And I kept moving with it, even when I didn’t feel part of it.

So I learned how to disappear while still being present. I stayed indoors more. Watched cartoons. Played movies just to have noise around me. Anything that made the world feel less sharp.

It helped. For a while.

But even then, there was always something underneath everything. Something I couldn’t name. Something I could feel waiting kinda…..