I was eight when I realized I lived in a different kind of room.
Not a real room. A room inside the world.
One with no windows — just walls that echoed everything too loudly.
The lights were too bright. The air too heavy.
People moved too fast, talked too much, touched too suddenly.
So I stopped moving.
I folded into myself like paper.
They called it “withdrawn.”
I called it “safe.”
I remember one day — a teacher asked me a question.
I knew the answer. I felt the answer.
But my mouth couldn’t catch it.
It was like chasing a bird in a fog.
They laughed.
Not in a mean way.
Just in that way people laugh when they don’t understand something.
Like when a cat does something human, or a person does something too human.
That day I learned:
People don’t like what they can’t label.
So I became a label.
“Quiet.”
“Strange.”
“Autistic.”
Like stickers on a jar no one wants to open.
But here’s what they didn’t see:
While they were talking about “normal,”
I was watching the shadows in their eyes.
While they were solving math,
They say I don’t speak much.
But I’ve written a thousand conversations in my head —
with stars, with colors, with the shape of someone’s sadness.
Maybe I don’t belong in their room.
But I’ve built my own.
And in my room, silence is not empty.
It’s full of meaning they forgot how to hear.
If you meet someone who doesn’t speak like you do,
don’t assume they have nothing to say.
Maybe they’re just speaking in a language your heart has to learn first.
Ashborn
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