I Wanted to Be Chosen So Bad I Forgot to Choose Myself
Some of us don’t shatter. We erode, piece by piece, until all that’s left is a quiet ache mistaken for goodness. This is what it cost me to be so easy to love.
Some of us don’t break loudly. We do it slow, one skipped boundary at a time, one forced laugh swallowed down like cheap wine, one gentle betrayal dressed up pretty and called compromise so we can sleep at night. I mistook being picked for being seen. I mistook belonging to them for belonging to myself. I carved off every sharp edge, bit down every word that might splinter their calm, made my mouth a soft place so they’d never feel my bite. I called it love. They called it convenient. I gave them my softness before I learned it was never theirs to claim. I never noticed the blood dripping from my own wounds proof I was the only one bleeding for this comfort. I never asked who paid the price for making me this easy to keep. I know now. It was me. It’s still me. But my edges are growing back, and this time they’re staying sharp enough to remember. Now when I touch the mirror, I say: Pick him first. Every time. Pick him first, even if it means they flinch when the softness turns back to teeth.
They don’t teach you this in the polite houses.
Sometimes the easiest person to love
is the one too well-trained to guard their own blood.
I was that softness in a throat,
that obedient mouth that forgot its own teeth
just to keep the room calm.
I called it love because calling it sacrifice tasted too bitter.
I told myself they deserved the gentle parts,
even when they never asked what it cost me to stay so safe to hold.
They fed themselves on my hush, my easy yes,
my edges filed down until even my own bones mistook silence for survival.
This piece is the confession I never unpacked at the dinner table:
I didn’t break like glass, sudden and sharp.
I broke like rope snapping one thin strand at a time
until there was nothing left to pull tight.
They called it sweetness.
I know now it was surrender carved into my smile.
But edges don’t die.
They wait.
They remember the hands that dulled them.
They come back hungry for the bite that was denied.
So read this like a warning, or a benediction,
if my softness snarls now, it’s not cruelty.
It’s a homecoming.
It’s my ribs stitching themselves into armor
where apology used to live.
I’m not sorry if they flinch.
I’m only sorry for how beautifully I bled
just to keep their comfort warm
while my own throat begged for a name braver than good.
I’m not asking them to understand it now.
I’m asking me to remember it.
Every edge they filed down is growing back,
sharp, honest, and mine.
You’re not a subscriber,
you’re a co-conspirator.
This is a room where silence loses every time we open our teeth together.
Stay. Bring your confession.
Bring your version too loud for polite company.
Here, your rage is holy.
Your softness is armed.
Your boundaries are not up for polite debate.
Every poem you read here is a rib torn loose, a page refusing to stay dead.
Soon they’ll bind themselves into a living thing called Shadow Thoughts: The Silence That Kept Me.
Not tidy self-help but a mirror that won’t flinch when you do.
I don’t know when it’ll wear a spine and a barcode.
I don’t care.
It’s alive now.
Feral. Soft. Dripping on your screen whether you’re ready or not.
Stay loud enough to make the polite ones flinch.
Stay honest enough to scare the hush that raised you.
Stay. We’re louder together.
P.S.
If this stirred something in you,
it might speak to someone else too.
Feel free to pass it on.
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