There is a particular kind of person who learns, very young, that love is a room they are allowed to stand near but never inside. They press their ear to the door. They memorize the voices. They learn the rhythm of other people's belonging the way some children learn lullabies = secondhand, through the wall. This is not about being unloved. That would be simpler. This is about being someone who has confused the absence of love with its truest form, who has come to believe that the quiet after everyone leaves is the only honest sound in the world.
