Teenage Feelings

Anim stood on the rooftop, her arms stretched out as the cool night breeze wove through her hair. She no longer felt the weight of expectations pressing down on her chest, no longer heard the echoes of voices telling her who she should be. She had become light—weightless, untethered, something beyond the girl she once was.

But then, why did she still feel this ache?

She closed her eyes, listening to the silent whispers of the stars. She had spent so long trying to meet everyone else's expectations that she had forgotten what her own voice sounded like. Had she ever truly known it?

Her mother's worried calls from downstairs sounded distant, almost unreal. Her father's measured tone, always steady, never once cracking to ask how she really felt, drifted through the night. She thought of her brothers, of Ayera, of the people she had surrounded herself with—had she ever truly let them see her? Or had she been hiding all along?

Tears welled in her eyes, but this time, she didn't fight them. She let them fall, each drop carrying away the years of loneliness, the nights spent staring at textbooks instead of stars, the suffocating pressure of always being "good enough" but never "her."

She looked up at the vast sky, a sea of endless darkness speckled with light. Maybe that's what she was now—light in the darkness. Not disappearing, not fading, but finally, finally shining.

And for the first time in forever, she allowed herself to breathe.