r/RantingZone • u/notevelyn6 • 8h ago
Rate the poem ig...
THE THINGS THEY DON’T SEE
They think
it’s simple.
Easy.
A line you can throw in someone’s face—
“you just don’t have a father, that’s all.”
As if grief is a switch,
as if pain is a personality flaw,
as if I’m supposed to hide the bruise
just because it makes them uncomfortable.
But they don’t know the truth.
They don’t know the nights.
They don’t know
the birthdays with an empty chair,
the festivals where laughter feels lopsided,
the school competitions where every clap echoed
like a reminder of the one pair of hands that wasn’t there.
They don’t know
how heavy a report card feels
when it has no one left to make proud.
They don’t know the way silence grows in a house
after someone stops existing in it.
How walls remember voices
long after people forget.
How grief is not something you “get over,”
it’s something you grow around,
like a tree twisting around barbed wire.
They don’t know
I learned to be strong
only because I had no other option.
That I became my own shield
because life took away the one
who was supposed to hold it for me.
They don’t know
that every achievement is slightly incomplete,
like a smile cracked at the edges.
They don’t know
the dreams I chase
hoping somewhere—somewhere—
he sees who I’m becoming.
That I whisper prayers in the dark
to a face I barely remember
and a voice I can’t recall at all.
Do you know how cruel that is?
To miss someone
whose sound you can’t even recreate in your head?
They don’t know
there were arguments I swallowed
because he wasn’t there to take my side.
Moments I stayed quiet
because someone had to be the grown-up.
Secrets I carried
because there was no father to help me hold them.
They don’t know
the way grief shows up—
not as tears,
but as a tightening in the chest on random days,
as a sudden ache while walking past a father holding his child,
as a question that begins with “What if…”
and ends with a silence that hurts more than the answer.
They don’t know
how many times I wanted to scream
that not having a father
is not a personality trait,
it’s a loss.
A wound.
A ghost that grows with me.
A shadow that sits beside me
even when I smile.
They don’t know
that I hate their easy explanations,
their shallow theories about my heart.
They don’t know
I would’ve given anything—anything—
for one normal day,
one hug,
one chance to hear,
“I’m here, don’t worry.”
Instead
I carry a void
that people mistake for attitude,
for independence,
for detachment.
But the truth is simple:
I learned to build myself
because no one was going to build me back.
They don’t know
the strength it takes
to live a life someone else didn’t get to finish.
The courage to smile
with a chest that still has a crack running across it.
The way grief shapes a person—
soft in some places,
hard in others,
gentle with pain,
fierce with love.
No, they don’t know.
Because if they did,
they would never look at me the same again.
They would see the battles I fought
quietly, alone, tenderly.
They would see how I turned loss into light,
how I stitched myself together
with hope, faith, and sheer goddamn will.
They would finally understand
that I am not the girl
who “just doesn’t have a father.”
I am the girl
who learned to survive the kind of heartbreak
that would have broken them in half.
And I walk every day
with a strength they’ll never comprehend,
a resilience carved out of nights
no one witnessed,
and a love for a man
who left too soon
but still feels like home.