The Lost Child

You solved it by taking up less room. Books, headphones, the far end of the flat, an inside world that was honestly better than the one out in the corridor — and the quieter you were, the less of the trouble reached you. It worked, and it was the sanest move available: nobody can put you in the middle of something you are not in the room for. Adults called you no trouble at all and meant it as praise. The cost is that needing nothing stopped being a strategy and became a habit. Asking still feels like an imposition, being noticed still registers as exposure rather than warmth, and the people close to you can read your self-sufficiency as distance when it is mostly just practice. The inner world you built is real and worth having. The part worth revisiting is the assumption that your taking up space costs somebody else something.