It's been a long while since I last let myself write. Perhaps I knew that if I picked up a pen, I'd have to face the truth I've spent so long running from. I'd have to confront the parts of myself I hoped I could erase, or at least bury deep enough to forget. So I pretended- layer after layer of innocence, a mask so carefully worn that maybe even I could begin to believe it. I tried to make her, that girl I had become, fade like a bad dream, a distant memory, no longer me. But she is me. She's written in my story, etched in an ink I can't erase. Her chapter exists, unchangeable, no matter how hard I try to rewrite it.
If I am brutally honest on these pages, I fear her chapter never truly ended. She only learned to hide better, slipping behind smiles and small kindnesses, crafting a shield of atonement, act by act. And what if these good deeds are just layers of a disguise, armor I've wrapped myself in so others can't see the darkness still curled within? What if every kind act, every attempt to make amends, is just a cover? A facade meant to protect me from a truth that lurks inside me- that beneath the good others may see, there lies a monster I've never truly conquered. What if, in my deepest core, I am simply pretending at goodness, always fearing the day someone sees through it, or worse- when I can no longer ignore it myself? I can't escape the wish to start over. But life offers no fresh pages, no erasure of chapters already written.
Perhaps redemption is not the absence of my past, but the act of carrying it forward, letting its weight reshape me into something truer- something both ugly and beautiful, fractured yet whole. Maybe I am a tapestry woven from both light and dark threads, both the sharp edges of my flaws and the softness of my attempts to heal. Maybe true redemption is embracing this duality, learning to live with the bruises and the beauty alike, a mosaic art piece of both grace and grit.
YOU ARE READING
This Is Not for You (But Read It Anyway)
PoetryI didn't write this for you. I wrote it because I had to - in the middle of the night, on the back of receipts, in margins and spiral notebooks. These are the pieces of me that never asked to be shared. But here they are anyway. This book is made of...
