It has been five years since I took a flight on June 29 with two suitcases, leaving behind a life I had known for one I did not understand. I was 13 years old at the time, and I remember counting the days until my birthday on July 18, turning a year older in a place that did not yet feel like mine. My dad bought a cheesecake to celebrate, and no one really liked it, but we still ate it anyway, like it meant something more than it did

 But that was not the first moment that stayed with me. Somewhere in the middle of that twelve-hour flight, I got my period and said nothing. I used toilet paper and kept quiet, afraid to tell my dad. It felt easier that way. I barely knew him anyway. My whole life, I had only seen him a few times a year, usually in December, and he always came with candies, biscuits, and cereal. That was the version of him I knew someone who arrived with sweetness and left before anything real could settle. 

 I knew he lived in Denver, and I knew that him and my mom were never really okay, but most of what I knew came from what I had been told, not what I had seen. People always ask where my family was when everything was happening, and the answer is simple, they were there. From the outside, everything looked fine, maybe even perfect. But some things look the best right before they start to fall apart. Like a mango perfect on the outside, soft and sweet, until you cut into it and see what has been rotting inside.

 I was born the middle child, with an older sister and brother, each two years apart, and then a younger sister who came four years later. Being in the middle never felt like balance. It felt like being placed between two sides that never fully agreed, expected to understand both without belonging completely to either.

Before I moved, my mom told me things about my dad that I did not know how to process at the time. She told me his family did not want me when she was pregnant, and she told me this when I was twelve years old. I never asked why she chose that moment, and maybe I did not want to know. Maybe she was trying to protect me, or maybe she was trying to protect her version of the truth. Now that I am 18, I try to see things for myself, but it is not always clear.

I think she was right about a lot of things, maybe not all, but enough to make it hard to ignore. My dad has his own way of being, sometimes acting like he cares, sometimes saying nothing at all, and somehow both feel confused in different ways. My mom wants to be seen as someone who lacks nothing, someone strong, someone people can depend on, and I carry that image with her whether I mean to or not. I became someone who holds things together without ever being asked if I wanted to. 

Conversations that no child should hear somehow found their way to me, and even now, I am still in the middle of things that should not belong to me. There are moments where my dad and brother, living in the same house, talk to each other through my phone like I am just a space between them, and I wonder when that became normal.

Five years ago, I walked into Thomas Jefferson High School not knowing what was waiting for me. I did not know my schedule, my teachers, or where I was supposed to go. I did not know who would talk to me or if anyone would even notice me. I was still learning English, still learning how to use a computer, watching everyone move faster than I could keep up with. I watched high school happen from a distance homecoming, prom, parties, pictures on Instagram where everything looked perfect.

I remember looking at those pictures and wondering if anyone had ever seen me the way they saw each other, or if I was just passing through without leaving anything behind. I tried to change that. I remember emailing a girl in my class asking if she wanted to be friends, and she said yes, but I never figured out what to do after that. Another time I asked someone in person, and I do not remember how it ended, only how it felt like I had stepped forward just enough to realize I did not know how to stay. Over time, I started blaming myself.