The Part I Left, Lost Behind

Somewhere on the road to becoming someone, I buried the part of me that once felt everything.

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There was a boy inside me once.

He used to hum when he was alone.

He asked too many questions, talked to trees, smiled at strangers.

He’d cry without shame, dream without doubt, believe without bargains.

He trusted the world. He trusted me.

And I let him down.

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I don’t know the exact moment he left.

Maybe it was the day I stopped playing and started proving.

Maybe it was when I traded laughter for silence, wonder for worry, joy for results.

All I know is—he’s gone.

And all that’s left is me.

This version that wakes up before the sun, folds prayers into fatigue, walks through each day like a ghost in a borrowed body, chasing something I’m too afraid to name.

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He still whispers to me sometimes, from the hollow of my chest:

> “Will you ever reach there without me?”

“What happens if what you're chasing was a shadow… and I was the light you left behind?”

And God, those questions hurt more than answers ever could.

Because what if I am building a future that won’t even recognize the person I used to be?

What if I’m becoming everything I never wanted, just to survive?

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There are wrinkles on my forehead now.

Not the kind age gives you—but the kind anxiety carves into soft skin.

I’m only nineteen, but sometimes I feel like I’ve already lived too long in silence.

I carry an ache that has no name.

---

I’m tired of being the one who always holds it together.

Tired of smiling on the outside while crumbling where no one sees.

Tired of people calling me strong just because I never let them see me fall.

But the truth?

I do fall.

Every day.

And no one sees it—except the One who made me.

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The only hope I still have... is the One who shaped me in stillness.

The One who knows how many tears I hide.

The One who listens even when I say nothing.

The One I will return to when all this noise is over.

That’s the only thing keeping me from completely disappearing.

---

So I write.

Not because I’m healed.

Not because I’m wise.

But because something inside me is still searching for what I lost.

---

And if you see this version of me today—quiet, focused, composed—

know this:

I was once someone softer. Someone brighter. Someone braver.

---

And as I stand here, nineteen and already tired,

carrying invisible wounds and a soul stitched together by verses,

I whisper to myself:

> Was the price worth it?

Did you really have to lose him to become this?

And when you finally return to dust…

will he be waiting,

or gone forever?

>Junaid