Something in me went quiet after that day.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Just numb, like a song that used to play in the background of my life had suddenly stopped without warning.
I walked the same corridors. Laughed with the same friends. Ate the same dusty kota at break. But inside, I felt far away. From them. From myself. Even from the girl I used to be, the one who dreamed loudly and loved openly.
My mother started noticing things before I did.
She would sit me down some evenings, her deep voice suddenly soft, careful, filled with something that sounded like fear. She warned me about boys. About distraction. About how life has a way of taking young girls and hardening them before they even understand what is happening. She told me to focus. To protect myself. To not end up like her.
But I was hot-headed.
Young.
Stubborn.
And, for the first time in my life, I did not see my mother as my light. I saw her as an enemy to the small world I was trying to build for myself. So I grew distant. Closer to my phone. To silence. To the outside world. Further from home.
Even from myself.
Her sickness began quietly. Small signs that I brushed off. Long naps. Tired eyes. Short breath. I was too lost in my own fog to notice the storm slowly building over our house.
Still, somehow, by some miracle even I cannot explain, I passed Grade 8.
It was not because I worked hard. It was not because I was focused. It just happened, like a gift I did not feel worthy enough to carry. Everyone congratulated me while inside I felt empty, like a celebration I could not attend in my own body.
My relationship with him started to feel different too.
I no longer enjoyed seeing him in person. There was a heaviness in his presence that suffocated me. No spark. No comfort. No curiosity. But I loved hearing his voice on the phone. That was safe. That was distant. That did not require me to give pieces of myself I no longer even understood.
We talked for hours. Laughed sometimes. Pretended everything was normal.
But deep down, I already knew.
It wasn't love.
It was just noise filling a silence I was too afraid to sit in alone.
And while the world continued spinning, my own had already begun to slow.
I just did not know it yet.