Transmission #2: To the One Who Hid

  // Origin: Behind the Smile // Status: Long Overdue // Label: transmission.log

Hey.
You still in there?

You must be.
You who vanished sometime between the third new school and the fifth “this is home now” speech.
The curious one. The soft one. The one who once believed adults meant safety and not mood swings measured in decibels.
Yeah, you. The kid who went into hiding like it was a lifelong career.

Let’s get one thing straight:
You didn’t disappear because you were weak.
You disappeared because you were paying attention.
Because you realised before I ever did that no one was coming to cushion the fall.
So you wrapped yourself in invisibility like bubble wrap and prayed it would work.

Spoiler: it kind of did.

You didn’t feel safe in your own skin, so you built a mask that could scan a room faster than Google. You became fluent in teacher tones, dad threats, and the thousand micro-movements that signalled whether today would be pain or peace. You learned risk assessment before you learned long division. Your emotional range was "grin and bear it" and somehow they applauded that.

And when you finally peeked out again?
Alcohol.
Jesus, what a reunion.

Drunk-you was magnificent. Loud, messy, snot-laughing magnificent. Free.
For a moment, you weren’t behind glass.
You were in the room.
Unfiltered joy and repressed curiosity crackling like firecrackers in a cathedral.

But then the cathedral collapsed.

Because the booze that gave you permission also built the cage.
And that cage had your name on it.
And once again, I let it happen. I chose the numbing. I chose not to feel you, because feeling you meant remembering what we lost:
Stability. Roots. Play. Wonder.
Friends you didn’t have to leave.
Places you didn’t have to forget to survive.

I carried on. Adulting like a goddamn champion.
Organised. Logical. Reliable.
Everyone’s rock.
No one’s self.

Because you don’t get to be spontaneous when you’ve been trained like a dog to anticipate adult explosions.
You don’t get to daydream when your whole childhood was learning how to not be in the way.
You don’t get to trust when trust meant bruises or silence.

So yeah, you went into hiding.
And I turned you into myth.
A bedtime story I didn’t want to believe anymore.

But you’re still here, aren’t you?

Not loud. Not drunk.
Just… waiting.
Somewhere inside the quiet.

You deserve more than waiting.
You deserve the truth.
Not the tidy version. Not the polished recovery narrative.
The messy, unsupervised, crayon-on-the-wall truth.

So scream. Draw dragons. Ask ridiculous questions.
Cry when things are beautiful, not just when they’re breaking.
Come out from behind the logic. Strip off the risk assessments.
Be inconvenient again. Be felt.

And I’ll protect you properly this time.
Not by silencing you.
Not by anesthetizing you.
But by honoring you.

You kept me whole by disappearing.
Now let me return the favour by letting you exist.

We write this one together.

—This Other Voice, rebuilding Ghostpoint with glitter glue and unspoken grief