True
5251;
Score | 10
Nimmat Nigeria
Writer. @ University of Abuja
In Literature, Writing and Blogging 2 min read
Life Of Salma Muhammad
<p><br/></p><h4 style="text-align: center;">Page One: The Bad Person</h4><p><br/></p><p>Dear Diary,</p><p>I don’t know when it started. I just remember at some point I began to believe I was the problem.</p><p>No one ever said it directly. No one ever called me difficult or wrong. It was never that obvious. It was more subtle than that. A look that stayed a little too long. A sigh after I left a room. Conversations that felt lighter when I wasn’t part of them.</p><p>Nothing I could prove. But it was enough for me to start believing it anyway.</p><p>I was sixteen when the wardrobe incident happened.</p><p>My mother had replaced my old wardrobe with a new one. It was better in every way. Clean, polished, expensive-looking. The kind of thing people are supposed to be happy about.</p><p>But I wasn’t.</p><p>My old wardrobe had been worn and uneven, but it was mine. I stood in the doorway staring at the new one and felt something inside me tighten. I didn’t understand why it mattered so much, but it did.</p><p>After that, something in me changed.</p><p>I started skipping meals. At first it didn’t feel serious. Just small things—refusing food, saying I wasn’t hungry. But it continued until it became easier not to eat than to start again.</p><p>Then it got worse.</p><p>I started hurting myself. Not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted something to change. I wanted someone to notice me properly. Not just as someone passing through the house, but as someone who was actually struggling.</p><p>It worked.</p><p>My mother noticed. She apologised. Gently. Like she was stepping carefully around something she didn’t fully understand.</p><p>And she didn’t understand.</p><p>I knew that even then.</p><p>But I accepted the apology anyway, because for a short moment, it felt like I mattered.</p><p>Later, I realised it was never about the wardrobe. It was about wanting to be seen without having to fall apart first.</p><p>Life didn’t get quieter after that. If anything, it got louder. Everything kept moving—school, people, conversations—like nothing was wrong. And I kept moving with it, even when I didn’t feel part of it.</p><p>So I learned how to disappear while still being present. I stayed indoors more. Watched cartoons. Played movies just to have noise around me. Anything that made the world feel less sharp.</p><p>It helped. For a while.</p><p>But even then, there was always something underneath everything. Something I couldn’t name. Something I could feel waiting kinda…..</p><p><br/></p>

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