There’s a weight I carry,
but you wont hear about it.
I don’t know how to say the words, they get stuck somewhere between my throat and my fear.

Every time I think of opening up,
I tell myself,
“you’re overreacting.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“No one can fix it anyway.”

Its mine.
My mess.
Why make it someone else’s?
What could they even do?

Talking about it feels like asking for pity.
Like I’m begging for attention I don’t deserve.

And if I tried,
if I really spoke,
I know I’d cry.
The kind of cry that leaves you raw and ashamed.

And what if they look at me like I’m weak?
Like I’m broken beyond repair?

Most days I tell myself my feelings don’t count.
Others have it worse.
I should just handle it.

And so I don’t speak.
i swallow it whole.
I wear a smile that lies.

But when you need someone when you are falling apart,
I’m the first to listen.
I’ll sit in the dark with you.
I’ll carry what you can’t.

Funny how I can give kindness, but can’t let myself take it.
I don’t know how.
I don’t think I’m allowed.
And deep down, I’m so scared of being a burden that i’d rather bleed in silence.

I don’t even notice when I start.
Fingers find skin like they’re searching for silence.
I pick until it stings, peel away the edge of something that wasn’t whole a moment ago.

It’s not pain I’m chasing.
It’s not anything,
really.

Just something to do with the noise in my head and the quiet in my chest.

Nails tear, skin rips off.

It’s not about thinking.
It’s about remembering what the mind tries to forget.

A habit.
A comfort.
A scar I’m still making with hands that just won’t rest.

I wish I could explain
how it helps,
even when it hurts.
How it feels like doing nothing
and everything
at once.

You don’t know how much your words and actions broke me,
how they cut deeper than any scar could.

You never cared how I bled inside, only how it fit your story.
After every fight, you act like it never happened,
like to you didn’t rip me apart, like I’m not shaken from your storm.

But I am.
I am broken.

I hate you.
not the childish way, but the way carved from survival, from needing to protect a fragile heart you never learned to hold gently.

When you truly show me love, I don’t know what to do. It feels awkward, strange, like a trap, because your love always came with a cost.
I watch others, friends with mothers who smile without storms, who hug without fear, who speak without swords. and my heart aches, tightens with jealousy.

Why can’t I have that?
It’s not fair.

Every conversation with you
is like walking on glass. one wrong step and everything shatters.
I shrink,
scared of the woman who should have been my safe place.
The scars you left inside me are not healing
And I don’t think they ever will.