The Youngest

I was born in 2004, a year people romanticize as the beginning of a bold, fearless generation. Apparently, we are supposed to be confident. Independent. Unapologetic.

I am none of those things.

I am the youngest in my family, which sounds like a privilege when people say it out loud. The youngest are supposed to be adored. Protected. Spoiled. They call us the princess of the house, as if a title automatically comes with freedom.

But no one tells you that princesses can live inside cages.

By the time I was old enough to understand conversations, I had already become the silent witness to everyone else’s struggles. I grew up listening to stories of hardship, sacrifice, judgment, and survival. I knew who suffered, who endured, who compromised. I became the family’s listener. The quiet ear in the corner of every room.

What I never became was a voice.

I heard everyone’s pain, but I never found a place to put my own. There was always something more important. Someone older. Someone louder. Someone whose problems deserved more space than mine.

Maybe it is my fault. I replay that thought often. Maybe I am too quiet. Too hesitant. Maybe I don’t know how to hold on to people properly. Because whenever I try to build something real, something honest, it slips away. People leave. Conversations fade. And I return to the same position I have always known best: alone, but pretending not to be.

They say the youngest child has it easy. They say we are lucky. But what they don’t see is how often decisions are made for us before we even realize we had a choice. What to study. How to behave. When to speak. When to stay silent.

Every decision made on my behalf comes wrapped in love, but it still feels like control.

And slowly, something strange happens when you are never trusted with your own choices. You begin to doubt yourself. Even the smallest decisions feel heavy. Even simple preferences feel wrong. I hesitate before speaking. I question my instincts. I feel guilty for wanting something different.

It is difficult to grow when everyone assumes you are still small.

I do not feel like a princess. I feel like a carefully managed responsibility. A project shaped by other people’s fears and expectations.

And somewhere between being the family’s listener and being the obedient youngest child, I misplaced something.

Myself.

And sometimes I wonder when it started, this quiet shrinking of myself. Was it the first time someone said, “You’re too young to understand”? Or the first decision made for me before I even knew I had an opinion? Silence does not arrive loudly. It settles slowly, like dust in a room no one cleans. And one day you look around and realize you have been living inside it for years, breathing it in, mistaking it for air.

And start to doubt yourself.

( it's my first time writing something please ignore it if there's spelling mistakes. English is not my first language that's why . And I hope you guys will understand my feelings and the feeling that I am trying to express through the lines )

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