She Was Never the One They Chose

She was never the one they chose.At least, that’s what she remembers.

From the beginning, she knew she wasn’t the favourite. She knew her father loved her brother dearly. She could see it in the way he looked at him, the way he thought about him, the way he seemed to notice him.

And she noticed.

Children notice things adults think they don’t.She craved that kind of love too.

She wanted to be looked at like that.

She wanted to feel like she mattered just as much.

But somehow, she was always there in the background.

Her mother wasn’t much different.

Her mother believed that being harsh would make her obedient. So when she was a child, she was beaten because she was a late bloomer.

Until she was twelve, she was treated that way.

Even after twelve, the beatings continued.

She grew up learning that there was always something about her that needed to be corrected.

She was never praised for much.

They looked at her brother.

Not her.

She was simply there.

And somewhere along the way, she was told that they had raised her the way she was supposed to be raised.

But the person they raised wasn’t really her.

She didn’t even know who the real her was anymore.

Then she turned fourteen.

Something changed.

Her father started treating her well.

It was something she had wanted for years.

And strangely enough, she didn’t like it.

Maybe she didn’t know how to accept something she had spent so long living without.

Maybe, after years of wondering why he didn’t love her, she didn’t know what to do when he finally began showing her something that looked like love.

And then, that same year, she lost him.

She had loved her father.

And she had believed that her father loved her too.

But now she is twenty.

And she resents him.

She resents him for those thirteen years.

For the years when she wanted his attention and didn’t feel like she had it.

For the years when she watched him love her brother and wondered why she couldn’t have the same.

And there is one thing she still remembers.

The last phone call.

Her father wanted to talk to her brother.

Not her.

It was probably just a phone call.

A small moment.

But for a girl who had spent her childhood wondering whether she mattered to him, it became something she couldn’t forget.

She misses her father.

She knows she does.

But maybe she doesn’t love him the way she used to.

Or maybe she still loves him.

Maybe the love is simply buried beneath the resentment.

She doesn’t know.

There are too many things she never got to ask.

Too many things she never got to understand.

And then there are her grandparents.

They loved her.

They really did.

But she didn’t treat them well.

At the time, she didn’t understand what their love meant.

She didn’t know how precious it was.

Now she does.

And now she feels guilty.

She thinks about the way she treated them.

She wonders why she wasn’t kinder.

Why she didn’t appreciate them.

Why she failed to understand the people who were loving her while she was so busy wondering why everyone else wasn’t.

That thought hurts differently.

Because she can’t change it.

She can only remember.

And somewhere between all those memories, something inside her disappeared.

Her reason to believe.

Her reason to love.

Her reason to keep searching for whatever it is she’s looking for.

She doesn’t know what love is.

She never really learned it.

So when someone tells her they love her, she doesn’t feel safe.

She becomes afraid.

She wonders what they want from her.

She wonders whether they’ll find her insecurities and use them against her.

Whether they’ll discover the things she is ashamed of and turn them into weapons.

She doesn’t trust people who say they love her.

Because love, to her, has never been something simple.

Love has been mixed with fear.

With comparison.

With pain.

With loss.

And still...

she wants it.

She wants to be loved.

Not just casually loved.

She wants the kind of love she sees in fairy tales.

The kind she sees in romantic comedies.

The kind where someone looks at one person and somehow knows:

It’s you.

She wants to be chosen.

Not because she is useful.

Not because she is convenient.

Not because there is nobody else.

Just because she is herself.

She knows she probably won’t get that.

She knows real life doesn’t work like fairy tales.

She knows romantic comedies are stories.

And yet she still hopes.

She doesn’t know what she wants from life either.

She doesn’t have a goal.

From the beginning, she was told that she couldn’t achieve it.

When someone is told for long enough that they cannot do something, eventually they stop imagining themselves doing it.

She never got praised for anything.

She never learned what it felt like to be proud of herself.

Everyone looked at her brother.

She was the background.

And slowly, she started believing what they told her.

They told her she was nothing.

Even her parents made her feel that way.

And eventually, she believed them.

Now those voices live inside her.

When she dreams, she hears:

You can’t.

When someone loves her, she thinks:

What do they want?

When she makes a mistake, she thinks:

Of course. I’m worthless.

When she looks at herself, she still sees that little girl standing somewhere behind everyone else.

The girl who wasn’t praised.

The girl who wasn’t chosen.

The girl who was told she wasn’t enough.

The girl who didn’t know what she was supposed to become because everyone else had already decided it for her.

She says she doesn’t love.

She says she doesn’t know what she wants.

She says she doesn’t know who she is.

Maybe that’s true.

Or maybe she simply never had enough space to find out.

And perhaps that is the saddest part.

She spent so much of her life believing that she was nothing that she never stopped to wonder whether the people who told her that were wrong.

Still, there is something inside her that refuses to disappear completely.

A tiny hope.

Small enough that she almost doesn’t notice it.

She still hopes someone will choose her.

She still hopes she’ll find something she wants.

She still hopes she’ll discover who she is beneath everything they told her to be.

She still hopes that maybe love doesn’t always come with a price.

She doesn’t know if any of it will happen.

She doesn’t even know if she truly believes anymore.

But she hopes.

And maybe that’s all she has left.

Maybe the soul that lost its reason to believe hasn’t completely lost the ability to hope.

Maybe she isn’t nothing.

Maybe she was simply a girl who was never taught how to see her own worth.

Maybe she isn’t incapable of love.

Maybe she was never given a safe place to learn it.

And maybe, one day, she will finally understand that being the one they never chose does not mean she was never worth choosing.