when you grow up without a family to surround you,
sometimes you learn to walk through the world
asking people if maybe, just maybe, you could call them home.
i didn’t know i was carrying that question.
not for a long time. but i offered my heart to anyone who’d hold it—even if only for a moment. i called the ache love. i called the chaos care. and every time they left, i thought it was because i hadn’t given enough. that maybe i just could have done something differently.
i mistook momentary attention for affection. crisis for closeness. convenience for connection.
because when the people who were supposed to love you are the ones who forget you the fastest, who wound you the deepest, and who still call it love—you learn to need less. to rationalize. to say "i understand why they did it" while wiping the blood off your own hands.
so i gave. i gave everything. my time. my money. my loyalty. my forgiveness. my softness. i tried to prove i was worth staying for. worth choosing. worth loving.
but the people i gave to? they only came around when they were empty. they only stayed when it benefited them. and they only loved me when i asked for nothing in return.
i stayed. i knew what it was. i saw the neglect. i saw how you showed me cruelty in ways i could never fathom returning to you—and i kept trying. because maybe if i just decoded your lack of empathy, you’d come back. maybe the friends i begged to be siblings, the family i begged to notice me, the lovers i begged to just see me—maybe one of them would stay.
but they didn’t.
because really i was just a fire they loved to sit near and leave once they felt warm.
i was never the destination. just a detour. a soft place to land before they went back to the people they’d always choose first. the people that demanded more and respected themselves.
and now?
i release you.
every person who took what i gave and gave nothing back. every person who called me family when it was easy and stranger when it wasn’t. every person who made me prove my worth while handing theirs out for free.
i don’t want your crumbs. i don’t want your pity. i don’t want to be remembered out of guilt.
if you ever want to know me again, you’ll have to meet the version of me who no longer bleeds for breadcrumbs. who doesn’t soften so you can stay. who doesn’t beg to be seen.
because i’m not angry. i’m just awake.
i know now: love doesn’t look like cruelty. love doesn’t feel like fear. love doesn’t disappear when it matters. love doesn’t forget you when you’re sitting by yourself alone.
so i’m done chasing ghosts. done explaining myself. done pretending this is anything other than what it was.
i loved you. and that should have been enough.
but it wasn’t.
because you never loved me.
you just loved the proximity to my glow.
but now i know better.
this isn’t bitterness. it’s clarity.
and for the first time in my life, i’m choosing me.
and i’m okay sitting alone.