My name is Marissa Quinn, and I’m 18 years old. People think silence in a house means peace, but they’re wrong. There’s a kind of silence that isn’t calm at all. It’s hollow. It echoes in the walls and in your chest until you feel like you could scream and nobody would even turn their head.
That’s the silence I grew up in.
I was the middle child, which in my family might as well have been code for optional. My older sister, Lena, was the golden one—varsity cheerleader, straight teeth, hair always shining in the spotlight my parents held up for her. My younger sister, Aaron, was the baby, the one who could spill milk on the carpet and still get a kiss on the forehead because she was “just little.”
And then there was me. The girl who had to figure things out alone. The one nobody noticed had stopped asking for help.
When I was twelve, I thought maybe good grades would earn me attention, so I got straight A’s. Nothing. When I kept my room spotless, helped fold laundry without being asked, cooked dinner when Mom came home late, I thought maybe then I’d hear a “Thanks, Marissa,” or even a small “We’re proud of you.”
It never came.
But Lena got flowers for making varsity. Aaron got a brand-new Xbox for bringing home a report card with nothing higher than a C.
And me?
I got silence. Always silence.
Birthdays came and went. Some years there was a card. Some years, not even that. When I turned sixteen, they said it slipped their minds because things were hectic. That night, I sat on the edge of my bed staring at my phone, waiting for a single message.
It never came.
It wasn’t loud neglect—no screaming, no slamming doors—just a steady drip of indifference that felt heavier than yelling ever could. I cooked my own meals, washed my own clothes, took the bus to school. At some point, I realized I could probably disappear for days and they wouldn’t notice.
That thought didn’t even make me sad anymore.
It made me curious.
So I decided to test it.
When I turned eighteen, I didn’t say a word. No party, no cake request, no reminder. I just waited. At breakfast, nothing. At dinner, still nothing. Not even a passing happy birthday.
They didn’t remember at all.
That night, I zipped a bag closed. Inside was every dollar I’d saved from working part-time at the bookstore down the street. Not much—barely enough for a few weeks of rent—but it was enough for an exit.
I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t even leave a note.
I just walked out.
And you know what? No one called that night. Not the next day. Not for weeks.
At first, I checked my phone compulsively. I thought maybe they were waiting for the right time, or maybe they assumed I was sleeping over at a friend’s. But the days stretched into weeks. The silence never changed.
They didn’t notice.
And somehow, that didn’t break me.
It freed me.
Because if I could disappear so easily, then maybe I had never really belonged to them in the first place. So I made myself a promise that night: if they weren’t going to check in on me, I wouldn’t go back.
The first weeks on my own weren’t glamorous, but they were mine. I moved into a cramped apartment with a guy named Raphael—a friend of a friend who needed a roommate. The floors creaked, the ceiling had brown water stains, and the heater coughed like it was on its last breath.
But the silence there was different. Not suffocating, not hollow. It was the good kind—the kind where I could finally hear myself think.
I got a job at a diner two blocks away. Morning shifts waiting tables, then evenings flipping burgers when someone called out. Greasy, chaotic, loud.
But I liked it.
For once, effort meant something. No one knew my family. No one measured me against Lena or spoiled Aaron. They only cared if I showed up, worked hard, and cleaned up after myself.
For the first time in my life, that was enough.
That fall, I enrolled in community college. Financial aid covered part, and the rest I paid with diner tips, weekend shifts, and too many meals of canned soup. Exhausting, yes.
But for the first time, I felt a purpose humming in my chest.
I didn’t tell anyone about my family. When people asked where I was from, I let them assume. Some guessed I’d been fostered or aged out of the system. Others thought I’d been kicked out.
I let them believe it.
The truth—that I had parents who simply forgot I existed—was harder to explain.
Every now and then, something pulled me back for a moment: a mother hugging her son at the bus stop, a father helping his daughter carry groceries. And for just a second, I’d feel that sting, like I’d been robbed of something everyone else got for free.
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