I didn’t like to speak when I was a child.
Silence felt safer than sound. Words were dangerous; they could be twisted, punished, or thrown back at me.

So I hid.

Behind doors. Behind curtains. Behind the version of me that stayed small and quiet enough not to be noticed.

My mother used to call me the dumb one in the house.
My brother was the brightest in the universe. He got the attention, the toys, and the praise. I got her rage, her comparisons, and her cold indifference.

I never had a birthday party. Never blew out candles or unwrapped presents. The only toy I ever owned was a small teddy bear my father brought home from work for free, forgotten by someone else, but to me, it meant the world.

When we went out as a family, I was asked not to look at anything.

My brother always got the latest and the most expensive Transformer.

I got lessons in invisibility.

That was my gift: the skill of vanishing in plain sight.