the part of me i buried to belong

There was something about me
that didn’t fit.

Maybe it was too sensitive.
Too intense.
Too curious. Too bold. Too slow. Too soft.

I don’t remember who said it first.
But at some point —
I believed them.

So I corrected it.
Softened it.
Smoothed it out so it wouldn’t get in the way.

And it worked.
I fit in.
I succeeded.
I stopped causing problems.

But something else happened too:

I lost the thing that made me mine.

The trait I buried didn’t just disappear.
It twisted into shame.
And even when I found the right setting,
the right people,
the right place —
I had already forgotten how to use it.

How to trust it.
How to believe it was ever real.

Now I look around and wonder:
How many of us are living without our gift
because we learned to hate it too young?

And how many of us are calling ourselves mediocre
because we buried the very thing
that made us magic?

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of you did you silence to be more acceptable — but still miss?

🌒 next layer:

→ read: disowning the gift too soon → chapter: underneath