When you find yourself constantly playing the role of second mother, juggling your household’s strenuous schedules along with stacked school assignments;

when you’re attuned to the expectation, subtle but persistent, in your parents’ voices, the demands hidden poorly behind their tight-lipped smiles;

when you’ve devoted your time and energy to your siblings’ success, and don’t know when you’ll be given that same attention;

when you realize your fear has become frantic and your panic paralyzing as you struggle to breathe in a dark room far away from home, because even though you’ve left you are still suffocated by the knowledge that every decision you make will be noted, and every action will be closely monitored, and every failure will be scrutinized with the unforgiving muscle of judgement;

when you’ve been practicing weeks in advance to answer aunties and uncles who are endlessly asking: “So, what exactly do you want to be?”;

when you are told, time and time again, directly and indirectly, that your dreams must be molded to fit inside the confines of cultural standards;

when you are expected to be the embodiment of patience, sacrifice, and resilience, even while your own soul yearns for recognition;

when your teenage years, which should be a time of self discovery, are instead spent walking the tightrope of fulfilling familial duty and developing personal aspirations;

when you cannot hide from the reminders of why you must surpass the achievements of the previous generation, why you must succeed because you have been given opportunities they never had;

when you  have lost the ability to differentiate between what you want and the wants of those you love

— then you will wonder why it feels too late to develop your own voice.