God lives in the streetlights of a childhood I will never have. God lives in times and distances and lifetimes I will never see.

The amberglow of filament, buzzing, bearing witness to the follies of a youth unrestrained by threads and eyes, claws and teeth. A youth unsullied, untorn, holy, pure in its godlessness and disgust.

Bikes left on the side of a road, no frills, no flounces, shirtlessness in a pool where the air is heady and chlorinated, and I would struggle to prove myself against the natural equilibrium of oxygen and water six feet under.

There is a childhood that was robbed of me by no one.

There is an adulthood being robbed from me by the people I once idolised as my saviour.

There is a weight to living a life that was never yours.

Not the kind that bends your back or slows your steps—
but the kind that settles somewhere unseen,
behind your ribs,
in the pauses between breaths.

It is the weight of becoming
what you were told you should be
before you even knew what you wanted.

—

I learned early that freedom was a story told to other people.

It lived in scraped knees and late evenings,
in voices that didn’t lower when adults entered the room,
in laughter that didn’t ask for permission to exist.

I learned to watch it instead.

Through windows.
Through expectations.
Through the careful shaping of a life that fit into frames I didn’t choose.

—

There is a particular exhaustion
in being understood incorrectly.

In being called “good”
when what they mean is “quiet.”

In being called “mature”
when what they mean is “manageable.”

In being praised
for folding yourself into something smaller,
something easier to hold.

And you learn—slowly, perfectly—
how to disappear without leaving.

—

I used to think love would feel like rescue.

Like someone noticing the weight
and asking me to put it down.

But love, as I was taught to know it,
felt more like instruction.

More like:

“Be this.”
“Don’t be that.”
“You’ll understand later.”

Later never came.

Only more becoming.
More shaping.
More quiet agreements I don’t remember making.

—

There are moments—rare, sharp—
when I almost meet myself.

In reflections that don’t last long enough,
in thoughts that feel too loud to keep,
in the sudden urge to run
without knowing where.

And in those moments, I wonder—

Who would I have been
if I had been left alone?

—

There is a childhood I never lived.

There is a self I never met.

And somewhere between the two,
there is this version of me—

carrying a life
that feels both mine
and not mine at all.