Midnight wrapped the Malhotra house in quiet darkness.
Everyone slept peacefully—
her father snoring,
her mother scrolling through her phone,
her siblings laughing in their dreams.
No one noticed the girl sitting in the corner of her tiny storeroom,
holding a half-torn bag
and staring at a blank wall
as if it contained the secret to survival.
It was her 18th birthday.
No wishes.
No cake.
No “happy birthday.”
Not even an indifferent nod.
Just silence.
Aarya zipped her bag tightly.
Inside, she had packed exactly five items:
Two sets of clothes — folded neatly, because structure was the only thing she had left.
A plastic water bottle — half-filled, because she wasn’t important enough to refill it.
A notebook — her only friend, the one she wrote in when her heart needed a voice.
₹2,000, savings she had secretly collected from odd jobs in school.
And a broken heart — heavy, but strangely numb.
She paused at the door one last time.
Not for nostalgia.
Not for regret.
Just to confirm no one cared enough to wake up.
She was right.
Her family slept.
The house breathed without her.
Her existence didn’t matter.
So she walked out.
Quietly.
Softly.
Almost like she was a thief stealing her own freedom.
The gate creaked.
Her chest tightened.
Her throat burned with words she would never say.
She didn’t look back.
There was nothing worth looking back at.
The Road to Nowhere
The street was cold.
Her legs trembled.
Her hands shook.
Her heart hammered against her ribs…
not out of fear, but out of habit.
She had lived in fear so long that even freedom felt suffocating.
Her phone battery died halfway down the lane.
She didn’t turn it back on.
There was no one who would call anyway.
By 3 a.m., she was walking on an empty highway,
her shadow her only company.
The Railway Station
She reached the railway station at dawn.
The iron benches were cold.
The ground was colder.
People slept around her—
some drunk,
some homeless,
some simply tired.
For the first time, she blended into the world.
Not as an invisible daughter,
but as just another lost soul.
She curled up in a corner,
hugging her bag like a lifeline.
Her stomach growled.
Her body ached.
But she felt nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Not sadness.
Just emptiness.
The Dhaba Days
By the second day, hunger clawed at her insides.
She hadn’t eaten since she left.
A dhaba owner noticed her sitting outside, staring at leftover pieces of roti on a plate someone abandoned.
“Kaam karegi?” he asked gruffly.
Will you work?
She nodded.
She didn’t ask what the work was.
She didn’t ask how much he would pay.
She didn’t ask anything.
She washed dishes until her fingers wrinkled like wet paper.
She wiped tables until her back screamed.
She cleaned floors, lifted crates, scrubbed burnt pans.
Her first pay:
₹120
and a plate of dal-chawal.
She ate silently, methodically, without tasting anything.
Men stared at her with hungry eyes.
Women looked at her with pity-coated judgment.
But Aarya didn’t flinch.
A man brushed against her purposely—she didn’t react.
A woman snickered, calling her “jhalli”—she didn’t blink.
Someone mocked her silent nature—she didn’t care.
Pain couldn’t touch her.
Life couldn’t break her.
Because she had already been destroyed by the one thing that was supposed to protect her—
her family.
The Nights Were the Worst
She slept on the station floor,
her bag under her head,
the sounds of trains merging with the murmurs of drunk travelers.
Sometimes, strangers stepped over her.
Sometimes, she woke up to shouts, fights, arguments.
Sometimes… she didn’t sleep at all.
But she never cried.
Not once.
Her tears had abandoned her long ago.
The Transformation of Fire
Every day, life tested her—
hunger, harassment, exhaustion, fear.
But each test hardened her.
Each scar sharpened her.
Each night of survival melted a piece of the girl she used to be.
And from those melted pieces,
something new began to shape itself.
A determination.
A steel inside her spine.
A wildfire beneath her silence.
Aarya learned to navigate life’s ugly corners
with the same calmness she once used to walk her school corridors.
By the end of the first month,
she had stopped shaking.
Stopped trembling.
Stopped feeling weak.
She had survived the world’s cruelty—
Because the world was nothing compared to the cruelty of being unloved in your own home.
The invisible daughter had finally stepped into the real world.
And though she had nothing—
no home,
no family,
no support—
she had something far stronger:
An unbreakable will.
The kind that would not just help her survive…
but one day,
help her rise.
i want become a writer
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