Sometimes I sit with a strange question: How much of who I am is truly me. and how much of me is just the person I had to become to survive everything I went through? The quiet version. The careful version. The one who learned to stay small, not ask for too much, not react too loudly. The version that hides pain so nobody has to deal with it. I wonder who I would have been if life hadn't forced me to build all these walls. If my heart hadn't learned how to protect itself from disappointment, silence, and loss. And some nights that thought sits heavy on my chest. because I don't know if the real me is buried somewhere inside, or if survival quietly became my entire personality.