Chapter Five:

There's this gap between me and the adults in my life, an unspoken distance that feels impossible to bridge. It's like we're living in parallel worlds - close enough to feel the same air, but never truly connecting. I see them, and they see me, but we never really see each other. There's always this invisible wall between us, built from years of unacknowledged responsibility that I never asked for, but was somehow thrust upon me. And now, it's like we're both stuck in a pattern where no one asks the tough questions. No one asks me how I'm really doing, not because they don't care, but because they've come to expect that I'll be fine. They've come to believe that I can handle it all, and so they don't have to worry about me.

I don't ask them about their struggles either. I see them too - my parent, the adults in my life - and I know they have their own burdens. They have problems they can't talk about, things that weigh on them that I'll never fully understand. But I don't ask. I don't ask because I know if I do, they'll probably think I'm trying to butter them up, trying to get something from them. Like I'm angling for a favor or a little sympathy. But that's not it. I just want to connect. I want to know that it's okay to struggle, that it's okay to need help. I want them to see me as more than just the older sibling who's supposed to carry everything on their shoulders.

But the truth is, it feels like we've stopped talking to each other. There are no real conversations anymore. We're all just playing our parts, sticking to our roles. They're the parent, and I'm the oldest. We don't talk about feelings, we don't open up. We live beside each other, yet we never really share our lives. They never ask me how I'm doing, not in a way that really means something. And I don't ask them either, because I know they won't really answer. So we all carry our pain in silence, burying it under the weight of responsibility that no one ever stops to question.

It's isolating, this distance. I'm not invisible, but I might as well be. I carry this weight that no one else seems to see, not because they don't care, but because they don't know how. And I've learned to stay quiet about it because every time I try to speak up, it feels like I'm being met with walls. The silence becomes comfortable, even though it hurts. And I've gotten so used to it that now, I don't know how to break it.