No one corrected my mother.
No one said my name.
That night, after the guests left, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and stared at the inside of my closet door until sunrise. By morning, something in me had hardened.
I left for college on scholarship three months later. Out of state. Business program. Cheap sleep. Two suitcases and an optimism that embarrasses me now.
I thought distance might make my family kinder.
Instead, it made erasing me easier.
Calls became perfunctory. Then rare. Then gone.
Holiday invitations somehow always arrived too late. Birthday messages stopped. Sarah texted when she needed something small—advice about internships, help rewriting a cover letter, a quick edit on an email—but never once asked how I was doing in any meaningful way.
Then my grandmother died, and I found out from a cousin’s Facebook post.
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