i stopped asking why you didn’t stay and started asking why i did
AFTER YOU
Choosing Me
for learning to stay with yourself
Read it in the room, by lamplightthe day i stopped checking if you’d texted was the first day that was mine
i’m learning that ‘too much’ was only ever too much for you
i used to shrink so you’d have room now i sleep in the middle of the bed
healing looked like eating breakfast and not telling anyone about it
i don’t need closure from you i closed it myself
i made a playlist with no songs that remind me of you it’s my favourite one
some days i still miss you and then i remember how quiet i had to be to keep you
i forgave you not because you asked but because i was tired of carrying you
i finally answered ‘what do you want?’ without thinking of you first
they call it being cold i call it not handing out keys anymore
i am not your second chance i am my first one
one day i caught myself laughing and didn’t look around to see if you noticed
the love i kept pouring into you tastes better in my own cup
it took losing you to find out i was here the whole time
i deleted the photos and kept the version of me in them
you were a lesson i paid for in full i’m keeping the receipt
i don’t want someone to complete me i want someone who notices i already am
rest is not giving up it’s choosing to still be here tomorrow
i stopped auditioning for people who had already cast someone else
being alone used to scare me now it sounds like my own music at my own volume
i’m proud of the version of me who left even though i cried the whole way home
small wins: someone said your name and i kept eating
i’m not who i was when you left i’m who i became because you did
the right people won’t make you beg to be remembered
i’m learning to be the person i used to wait for
i didn’t get over you all at once i got over you every morning for a while
i choose me not instead of love but as the beginning of it
i said no and the sky didn’t fall it just got bigger
i’m done being someone’s ‘maybe later’
i took myself to dinner and nobody checked their phone while i talked
my peace is not up for negotiation anymore
i stopped explaining myself to people committed to misunderstanding me
i left the group chat that made me feel small and nothing bad happened except quiet
i used to ask ‘do they like me?’ now i ask ‘do i like who i am around them?’
you will lose people by choosing yourself let them go they were holding the door shut
i’m my own safe place now it took a while to build
i stopped waiting for an apology and gave myself the explanation instead
i’m not hard to love i was just loving the wrong people first
i bought myself flowers and they lasted longer than you did
boundaries aren’t walls they’re a door i finally have the key to
i don’t chase anymore i walk and the right ones walk next to me
i forgave myself for staying that was the hardest goodbye
this year i’m choosing the people who choose me back on purpose
i used to call it ‘being too sensitive’ now i call it knowing what i deserve
i’m not closed off i’m just careful with who gets a spare key
i don’t need to be chosen to be worth something i checked
i left before i had a plan turns out leaving was the plan
i finally like the person i come home to
this is me choosing me not once but every single day