The Kid You Didn’t See

There’s always that one kid at the gathering.

The one who lingers near the door, waiting for an uncle to notice. The one who says “Eid Mubarak” with a quiet smile, hoping someone will hold them a second longer. That kid was me.

I wasn’t the loudest. I didn’t run up and shout. I stood and waited, polite and unsure, while my cousins got the hugs, the money, the praise. “You’re growing so fast!” they’d say to them. “So smart, so handsome!” And then, silence. Or worse, the glance my way that said nothing at all.

Sometimes they gave me a folded bill out of obligation, not warmth. No questions about school, no real talk, no remembering what I liked or who I was. A pat on the shoulder. A distracted “how are you?” that didn’t wait for an answer. They laughed with the other kids. They pulled them close. With me, it was always arm's-length. Always forgettable.

And I tried. I tried to be the kind of kid they’d remember. I dressed nicely. I helped set the table. I smiled when I didn’t feel like smiling. But no matter how much I gave, I never felt like enough to earn their attention.

The thing is, kids do notice. We remember. We remember who looked us in the eye and who looked past us. We remember which adults asked real questions, and which ones forgot our names. We carry that into the quiet places of our growing up, into the way we speak, the way we trust, the way we see ourselves.

Now that I’m older, I think about those moments every Eid. And I think about the other kids, the ones just like I was. The shy ones. The quiet ones. The ones who get skipped in the laughter and the gift-giving and the photos. I want to tell every adult in the room: they’re watching. They’re listening. They’re remembering.

So this is my reminder, to myself, to my future, to anyone who will one day stand where those uncles stood:

See every child. Hear them. Remember their name. Ask how they are and wait for the answer. Give them a moment that feels like it matters. Because it does.

Children don’t forget who made them feel invisible.

And they never forget who made them feel seen.

Unfinished

There are feelings that don’t arrive as words.

They don’t introduce themselves, don’t explain where they came from or what they want. They just settle somewhere inside you, soft but persistent. Like a quiet shift you can’t quite trace back to its beginning.

I’ve been thinking about how some emotions don’t belong to a single moment.

They’re not tied to one memory, one person, one version of you. They feel layered. Like different points in your life folding into each other, past, present, maybe even something that never fully happened but still left its mark.

It’s strange, the way something can feel familiar without being clear.

Like recognizing a place you’ve never been, or missing something you can’t fully name. You try to hold onto it, to understand it, but the more you reach for it, the more it slips into something quieter. Not gone, just harder to explain.

And maybe that’s what it is.

Not confusion.
Not even nostalgia.

Just the feeling of something that mattered, existing without needing to be defined.

I think about all the things that never got to fully exist.

The words that stayed unspoken.
The moments that paused instead of continuing.
The versions of us that didn’t get the chance to become anything more than a possibility.

They don’t disappear.

They stay in softer ways. In the background. In the spaces between clearer thoughts. In the way something small can suddenly feel heavier than it should.

And when they come back, they don’t ask to be understood.

They just ask to be felt.

Maybe not everything needs a conclusion.

Maybe some things are meant to remain unfinished, not as something broken, but as something that simply wasn’t meant to turn into anything else.

And maybe that’s why they linger the way they do.

Not to pull you back.
Not to keep you stuck.

But to remind you that even the quietest, most uncertain parts of your life still meant something.

Even if you never found the words for them.