“You must be the oldest,” they always say.
“Yes, I am,” I always reply instinctively.

“How many siblings do you have?”
“One.”

“A brother or a sister?”

“A brother.”

Like clockwork, the same questions are asked, and the same answers are given.
And with each answer, a quiet deceit unfolds
 , a carefully crafted narrative built on omission.
Each false word, neatly placed,
conceals a truth too heavy to speak aloud.

“Oldest?”
Guilt whispers the word softly, but accusingly.
It gnaws at my chest like a parasite,
hissing, “Impostor.”
It looks at me and sees someone made to be second,
pretending to be first.

But it’s not my fault.
It’s not my fault that when I arrived, the role of first was already… vacant.
Not my fault that I grew up believing I was first,
that I built a self, a story, a sense of place around a title I didn’t earn,
but inherited.

I didn’t know the truth
Not until that night, when I was twelve,
And my mother crept into my room,
eyes full of shadows and heart heavy with something unspoken.

She told me about her.
The girl who came a year before me.
The girl who came first.

Since then, I’ve lived with Guilt.
I try to reason with it.
I tell it that I will be the first to graduate high school.
The first to go to college.
The first to get a job.
The first to marry.
Not because I took her place,
but because no one else was left to take it.

“It’s not my fault,” I whisper, tears tracing down my cheeks.
It’s not my fault that I’ll always be seen as first,
because there’s no visible trace of the one who came before.
No family portraits.
No tiny handprints.
No name etched in ink.
Only in memory.

It’s not my fault that, when people look at my family,
They see two kids,
a girl and a boy,
instead of three.

It’s not my fault that I didn’t have to be second.
That I came first instead.

Guilt looks at me then,
its harsh lines softening.

“I never asked to be first,” I whisper,
my heart clenching and unclenching like a fist.

If I could,
when they asked, “You must be the oldest,”
I’d say, “No, I’m not. There was someone before me.”
If they asked, “How many siblings do you have?”
I’d say, “I would’ve had two. Now I have one.”
If they asked, “A brother or a sister?”
I’d say, “Both. A brother and a sister.”

But how do I explain?
How do I tell them my mother had a daughter that only a handful knew about?
That she buried not just her child, but the memories too,
tucking them away where even we, her living children, couldn’t find them?
How do I explain that I am a replacement?
Someone born to fill the aching space where love and grief collided?
How do I explain the term second firstborn,
and how it’s the truest name I’ve ever carried?

Until I can,
until Guilt gives me the words,
I’ll keep pushing it back into the corners of my mind.

I’ll keep answering the questions the way I always have:
“Oldest.”
“One.”
“Brother.”

And I will keep calling myself the firstborn.
The first daughter.
The first everything.
Even if I was second.

In a quiet town wrapped in fog and forgotten dreams, a girl lived in a house with no mirrors. She kept the curtains drawn and the lights low, not because she liked the dark but because it matched the weather inside her bones.

One night, when the moon was hanging low like it had something to confess, the girl heard a knock, not at her door, but in her mind.

She blinked once. Then again.

When she looked up, Anger was sitting at her kitchen table, arms crossed.

Anger was always the first. He entered without hesitation, stomping into the kitchen like he owned the place. He was sharp, loud, and cruel, always making sure he was heard above everyone else.

“You let me in again,” he said, sneering. “You always do. Every time someone crosses the line, when they forget you, disrespect you, or make you feel small, I show up. I protect you.”

His voice was cold, unforgiving. It used to remind the girl of her father. The way he’d raise his voice, the way everything turned to blame. But lately, when she looked at Anger… he didn’t look like her father anymore.
For some reason, he looked like her.

After Anger came Fear, quieter, but no less powerful; he crept in through the back door and stood in the corner, watching everything. His eyes were wide, his hands clenched. He didn’t say much. He never did.

Fear wasn’t loud, but he had a way of filling a room.
He wrapped around her chest, whispering questions she could never answer:
What if something goes wrong? What if they leave? What if you fail again?

He left her hollow, paralysed in place, with her breath caught somewhere between her ribs.

Then came Sadness. She always arrived gently, almost politely, but stayed longer than anyone else. She sat beside the girl on the couch, never speaking unless spoken to. But her presence was weighty, like carrying soaked clothes you couldn’t take off.

She didn’t want to break the girl, just remind her of everything she had lost. Every missed chance. Every moment, she was never chosen. And the girl let her stay, because Sadness felt familiar. Almost safe.

Insecurity was the last to arrive. She never knocked either. She simply appeared, looking her up and down like she was judging her every move.

“You’re still not enough,” she said with a tight smile. “You talk too much. Or not at all. You feel too deeply, then you feel nothing. You’re too much and not enough all at once.”

Insecurity didn’t need to yell. She let her words carve slow, invisible wounds that stayed long after she left. And the worst part? The girl believed every word.

These four, Anger, Fear, Sadness, and Insecurity, were her most frequent visitors. They didn’t come every night, but when they did, they stayed for hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes longer.

She couldn’t remember the last time Joy had come to visit.
She couldn’t even remember what Joy looked like.
She wasn’t sure she’d recognise her if she walked in.

There were days she felt everything at once, like a storm with no warning. Other days, she felt nothing. Just numb. Just tired.

And in those hollow moments, Anger would return, louder than before, boasting, mocking:
“You need me. You made me. Don’t pretend you don’t want me here.”

And maybe… maybe he was right.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, the girl sat at the kitchen table, looking at each of them. She didn’t speak. She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream.

She just looked.

For the first time, she realised how much space they’d taken up. How much of her life had become conversations with ghosts no one else could see?

She didn’t know how to make them leave.

She wasn’t even sure she was ready to try.

But she understood something now.

This story, this heaviness, this house of unspoken emotions, wasn’t about someone else.
It wasn’t about strangers or parents or the past.

It was about the girl.

And the girl was me.