Unwritten

For so long, I wore a name stitched from sacrifice and silent pride— a daughter of dreamers, a worker of wonders, a seat at the table hard-won and hard-kept. I learned to speak in gratitude, to swallow my doubts, to prove, prove, prove that I belonged, that I was enough, that I was grateful for a door cracked open.

I built myself from borrowed bricks: my parents’ hope, my own hunger, the ache to be seen and never questioned. I pressed my voice into silence, let fear draw the lines of what I could say, what I could bear, what I could become.

But trauma is a mirror— it shows you the cracks and the light that leaks through. It asks: Who are you, when the mask slips? Who are you, when you choose yourself?

Now, I am learning to unlearn the weight of gratitude as a muzzle, to see freedom not as a gift but as a birthright. I am scared— but I am starting over, writing new chapters in the ink of my own voice.

I am not my job, not a single story, not a role handed down or a definition pressed upon me. I am the architect of my becoming: free to falter, free to rise, free to chase knowledge and carve new spaces for myself and for others.

Today, I claim the freedom to be messy, to be loud, to be wrong and to learn. To dream not just for myself, but for the ones who come after— to give, to speak, to build a table where every voice is heard.

I am not what I had to prove. I am what I choose to become. And my voice, unshackled, is my home.