My Last Story, My Strongest Voice"

I never imagined I would sit here, staring at a blank page, knowing this would be the last story I ever write.

Not because I’ve run out of ideas—stories still swirl inside my head like restless birds. Not because I’ve lost love for writing—no, if anything, it has only deepened. But sometimes, life draws a line in the sand and dares you to step over it. And I’ve reached my line.

My name is Ayaan, and for most of my life, I was silent.

I wasn’t born mute. I had a voice. I could scream, laugh, cry, and tell you everything that excited me. But around the age of nine, I stopped. It wasn’t a medical condition. It was trauma. A darkness that crept into our home one winter night and never quite left.

My father, once a kind man, had changed. Maybe it was the weight of failure or bitterness, I don’t know. But his temper grew as his dreams died. His voice was thunder, and his hands, storms. My mother tried to protect us—me and my younger sister—but there’s only so much shelter a woman with fear in her eyes can offer.

One night, I tried to speak up. I tried to tell a teacher. But my father found out. After that, the silence wasn't a choice. It was a shield. Speaking hurt. Staying quiet meant safety.

So I wrote.

In the back of my school notebooks, in old journals, on the back of receipts—I wrote. I wrote about other worlds, braver boys, heroes who never cried and girls who fought back. I gave voices to my characters because I couldn’t use mine. And slowly, in those silent spaces, I began to rebuild.

Years passed. I carried my silence like an invisible backpack, heavy but familiar. Until one day, during my second year of college, a professor read one of my short stories. It was about a boy who escaped a war-torn home and found peace under a tree in a faraway land.

“This,” she said, holding my paper up to the class, “is not just writing. It’s survival.”

That day changed everything.

It didn’t happen overnight, but something cracked inside me. The wall I had built over the years started to crumble, brick by brick. I began attending open mic nights, first as a listener, then a reader. My voice shook the first time I read my own words aloud. But people listened—not just with ears, but with hearts. They heard what I had buried for years.

I started writing more—not just fiction, but essays, poems, pieces of my truth. And with every word I put out into the world, I felt lighter. My voice, though once stolen, was returning. Not just to speak, but to roar.

Then came the diagnosis.

A rare neurological disorder, aggressive and unforgiving. The doctor said I might have six months of clarity—maybe less—before my hands would stiffen and my words would fade. Writing would soon become impossible. Speaking, a memory.

I didn’t cry when I heard it. I didn’t scream. I just walked out of the hospital, sat under an old tree in the park, and watched the wind move through the leaves. Funny, I thought. The same wind that once terrified me as a child now felt like comfort.

That’s when I decided to write one last story. Not a fantasy or a heroic tale—but this. My truth. My journey from silence to speech, from fear to voice.

Because maybe, just maybe, someone else out there is sitting in silence, thinking they’re alone. Thinking their voice doesn’t matter.

I want them to know it does.

I want them to know that silence isn’t weakness—it’s waiting. And when the time comes to speak, even a whisper can shake mountains.

So if you're reading this, thank you. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for giving my final words a home in your heart.

This is my last story.

But it is also my strongest voice.