I Fold Myself Like Paper

There’s a quiet art to vanishing.

Not the kind that ghosts practice, but the kind that people do every day—without anyone noticing. I am one of those people.

Each day, I wake up and fold. A corner here, a soft edge there. Neatly. Carefully. Precisely. Like origami. One crease at a time. Not out of beauty or art, but out of need.

I wasn’t always paper.

Once, I was flame. I laughed loudly in rooms that couldn’t contain me. I asked too many questions and loved without caution. My mother used to say I took up too much space—with my voice, with my presence, with my hope. My father just nodded behind his newspaper, as if agreeing that silence was safer.

So I learned.

The first fold came in school, when I raised my hand too many times. “You’re too eager,” they said. “Let others speak.” So I bent inward, silenced my knowing, and tucked it neatly behind my teeth.

The second fold was in friendship. Girls who clutched secrets like pearls and passed judgment like candy. I was too soft for them. So I flattened my laughter and bit down on the need to belong.

Then came love.

Ah, love. The folding was swift there. He loved the quiet version of me—the small, agreeable, low-maintenance version. So I reduced. I softened my edges, dimmed my brightness. I folded again, this time deeper. I let him hold my shape, thinking it was enough. I thought shrinking was a way to be kept.

But shrinking is not the same as being seen.

And folding is not the same as safety.

I became good at it, though.

When pain came knocking, I folded tighter. When work piled high and praise was sparse, I compressed myself to fit the mold—pliable, dependable, paper-thin. I became what the world needed me to be: easy to carry, easy to crumple, easy to forget.

I didn’t realize I had turned into paper until one afternoon, sitting in my car in a grocery store parking lot. The sun hit the windshield just right, warming my skin through glass, and I cried without warning. It wasn’t a sob. It was a soft unraveling—quiet, gentle, like the sound of a page turning. I hadn’t been touched in weeks. I hadn’t been heard in months. And still, I smiled at cashiers and said “I’m fine” like it was a prayer.

I wasn’t fine. I was folded into something no longer mine.

But here’s the strange part: paper is not weak.

It holds stories. It carries ink and blood and blueprints and maps. It can fly if folded into a plane. It can shelter if shaped into a crane. It can become armor, if layered enough. And so I began to unfold.

Slowly. Awkwardly. Gently.

The first unfolding was my voice. I told a friend, “I’m tired,” and meant it. I let silence fall after that, and didn’t rush to fill it. She nodded. She held space. The second unfolding came when I turned down a work call on a Sunday. My hands shook. But I chose rest. I chose no.

Unfolding is harder than folding. It’s louder. It cracks open seams that were pressed tightly for years. But it is also holy.

Now, I am somewhere between creased and free.

A paper swan with weathered wings. A letter half-written. A map that’s been used but still shows the way.

Sometimes I fold again. Out of habit. Out of fear. But I catch myself. I breathe. And I choose the harder thing: to stretch, to take up space, to say, “I want,” “I need,” “I am.”

Because surviving by growing smaller is not the same as living.

And I am tired of being small.

“I fold myself like paper, yes—but now I unfold, and in the creases, I find my story.”