There’s a kind of waiting that doesn’t look like waiting. It looks like an effort.

Cleaning the kitchen. Straightening the room. Doing things no one asked for, but hoping someone notices anyway.

That’s where this part of Nikki’s story quietly sits in Boom! Here I Am!

She wasn’t trying to be perfect. She was trying to feel seen. And somewhere along the way, those two things started to blur together.

You can almost picture it. Everything in place. Floors cleaned twice. The air carrying that sharp smell of polish. And then the pause, that moment before the door opens, where hope builds up just a little too much.

Maybe today will be different. But it rarely is.

And that’s where something shifts inside a child. Not all at once, but slowly. You stop expecting warmth. You start adjusting yourself instead.

You learn what gets a reaction and what doesn’t. You learn how to stay quiet at the right times. You learn how to give more, just in case it leads to something back.

It doesn’t feel like a lesson when you’re in it. It just feels like life.

What hits hardest here is how normal it all looks. There’s no big moment, no dramatic scene. Just a pattern repeating itself until it becomes part of who you are.

And later on, that same pattern follows you. You give more than you should. You wait longer than you need to. You hope people will see you without having to ask.

But somewhere deeper, there’s still that child standing in a clean hallway, listening for a door to open, hoping this time it means something.