I learned early that people leave. Some quietly,
like adults who pack promises into suitcases
and never look back when you tell them to stay.
Some loudly, with slammed doors and addiction clinging to the walls,
long after the yelling stops.
I learned early that love can disappear
without explanation,
that family can live in the same house, and still feel like strangers.
I learned early how to lose friends.
Lost them to a silence
so permanent, for now they only breathe in my dreams.
I replay their laughter,
asking myself what I missed, what I could have said,
to keep them here.
I lost others too—
to illness, to bodies that betrayed them piece by piece.
I watched hope shrink into hospice beds,
and learned that grief doesn’t always speak.
Sometimes it just sits beside you in silence,
carried through your eyes,
refusing to leave.
Now somewhere in all of this,
I longed to stay a child forever.
To believe adults knew what they were doing,
that growing up didn’t entail
carrying so much pain so silently.
Instead, I grew into questions.
Into depression that tells me,
rest is the same as collapse.
Into days where breathing feels like work,
and staying feels so forbidden.
There were moments
I didn’t want to stay.
Moments where I wondered
if disappearing would bring relief.
But I’m still here,
not because it was easy, but because the chemicals in me refused
to let my story
end there.
I stayed because I know what it’s like
to love people who won’t love you back, no matter how deeply
you try.
Because I was kept too long in places
that broke me,
confusing my instinctual needs with loyalty,
not knowing when love truly became tender harm.
I stayed because I have too much love
for a world that keeps telling me
it doesn’t deserve it.
Where this world is a dystopian fantasy,
and I need to make it real for someone else.
I am still learning that happiness doesn’t arrive all at once.
Sometimes it’s just a moment—
a breath that doesn’t hurt, and a reason to stand.
I am still learning
how to stay without losing myself.
I am still learning that being gentle in a cruel world is not a
weakness.
And maybe that’s my purpose,
to keep going,
to be proof that even when fractures occur,
I will choose to stay.
I have a future.
