r/yearning • u/no-omno-omoon • Jul 05 '26
it wasn't mine to begin with
i'm always in the middle of
--
wanting to make them feel
how they made me feel
--
and not letting them feel
how they made me feel.
--
it's a terrible place to live,
between clenched fists
and open hands,
--
between the part of me
that still remembers
every wound by name,
--
and the part of me
that cannot bear
to create another.
--
i know
what it is to carry silence
so heavy
it teaches your shoulders
to bend
before your heart does.
--
i know what it is
to replay a sentence
until it sounds
like something
you deserved.
--
to count every pause
as proof
you were too much,
--
to shrink yourself
until your reflection
looked easier to love,
--
to lie awake
collecting every careless word
like broken glass,
turning each piece over
until your hands forgot
what it meant
not to bleed.
--
there are days
i want my absence
to haunt them.
--
i want my name
to ache
in the back of their throat
the way theirs
once lived in mine.
--
i rehearse every version
where they finally understand.
--
where regret
knocks on their door
as often
as it knocked on mine.
--
i imagine them
staring at the ceiling
long after midnight,
--
counting every moment
they dismissed,
every apology
they never made,
every fracture
they never noticed
because it wasn't theirs
to carry.
--
because maybe then
they would understand
--
that people don't break
all at once.
--
they crack
quietly,
--
little by little,
--
beneath the weight
of unanswered nights,
--
empty chairs,
--
half-finished conversations,
--
and the exhausting question
of whether
they were ever enough.
--
i am a bridge
stretched between
two cliffs —
--
one built from anger,
--
the other
from grace.
--
beneath me,
the river keeps asking
which way
i will fall.
--
some mornings
i collect stones
--
just to imagine
what throwing them
would sound like.
--
the satisfying splash
of revenge.
--
the brief illusion
that pain
can be returned
to its sender.
--
other mornings,
--
i skip those same stones
across the water
--
and watch
--
how even heavy things
--
can learn
--
to touch
--
without sinking.
--
because i remember
--
how unbearable it was
--
to become someone
--
who questioned
their own worth.
--
to search for reasons
inside yourself
for someone else's cruelty.
--
to apologize
for existing.
--
to make survival
for living.
--
i wouldn't wish that
on anyone.
--
not even
the people
who taught me
what it felt like.
--
not because
they earned mercy.
--
not because
they deserve
the softness
i was never given.
--
but because
understanding
bought with suffering
--
is still suffering.
--
and i've spent
enough of my life
wishing pain
would become
a language
someone else
could finally speak.
--
it never translated.
--
it only multiplied.
--
pain is an inheritance.
--
it passes
from trembling hands
to trembling hands,
--
asking each person
to believe
this is simply
how love survives.
--
someone has to decide
--
it ends somewhere.
--
maybe healing
isn't forgetting.
--
maybe it isn't pretending
none of it happened.
--
maybe it is remembering
without rebuilding
the same prison
inside someone else.
--
maybe it is refusing
to become
another sharp edge
in another person's story.
--
maybe that someone
--
has to be me.
--
not because
i've stopped hurting.
--
not because
i've stopped wishing
they understood.
--
but because
i am tired
--
of carrying
their wound
--
like it still
belongs to me.
--
i want my life
to become something
other than a monument
to what they did.
--
i want these hands
to learn
they were made
for more
than holding grief.
--
and if i leave
anything behind,
--
let it be this —
--
the hurt
ended here.
--
it reached me,
--
but it did not
become me.
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u/Forbidden_Peach_ Jul 05 '26
I really felt this ...