🥀 I Wasn’t the Bully or the Bullied. I Was the Backup Punchline

In secondary school, I wasn’t part of the cool group. 😎

Or the pretty group. 💄

Or the sporty, loud, effortlessly magnetic group. 🏃‍♀️📣✨

I was… adjacent to it all.

Close enough to observe, far enough to never belong. 👀🚪

So I made myself funny. 😅

Not class clown funny - just enough dry humour to seem unbothered.

To deflect attention. 🔁

To stay off the radar of people who could turn a hallway into a battlefield. 🏫⚔️

Humour became my invisibility cloak. 🧥✨

If I made people laugh, they didn’t have to notice how weird I felt.

Or how hard I was trying not to exist too loudly. 🔇

Or how every group felt like a door I didn’t have the password to. 🔐🚫

I wasn’t bullied.
Not really.

But I never felt fully seen either. 👤💭

And that does something to you.

You get really good at observing. 🧐

At knowing how to read a room before you even enter it. 🚪👣

At choosing silence because it’s safer than explaining yourself. 🤫💬

I still catch myself doing it now, using humour to shrink the soft parts of me. 🎭🫥

But these days, I try to share the real stuff too.

Even if my voice shakes a little. 🎤🫶

Introvert overthinker in recovery.
You’re not alone in the in-between... I see you 🌒💬

Lins

Because your silence is never empty!