Married To the Pain

Some of us are not carrying trauma - we are being carried by it.

You sleep with it.

Eat with it.

Walk with it.

You don't even notice anymore.

The pain has your scent on it now.

Wars your voice like a second skin.

Spits your words out in every conversation you don't finish.

Breathes down your neck when you are laughing too loud.

Slips its hands over your mouth when you almost say what you really feel.

You think you are living...

but you are just managing the burn.

Keeping the wound alive like it is your only proof you ever mattered.

You do not trust peace.

You do not even want it.

Because what if you let go -

and the only thing left, is you?

The pain shows up before you do.

It speaks first.

It fights first.

It ruins the good before it can even settle in your hands.

It sits between you and everybody you ever love,

like a gate you won't open,

like a gun you won't put down.

And it grows.

It grows in the quiet hours.

It grown in the small betrayals.

It grows when YOU choose the fight over the conversation,

the silence over the apology,

the bitterness over the breath.

Pain becomes the architect of your life.

Building walls out of your memories.

Roofing your house with the things you will never forgive.

Painting your days in colors only rage can see.

And you wonder why you are tired.

Why you cannot feel.

Why you cannot find your way out of yourself.

You made a covenant with the pain.

A vow.

A promise:

I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU.

You married it without knowing.

And now you carry its children:

Suspicion. Doubt. Bitterness.

A rage that eats the edges of every good thing that tries to stay.

You let pain name you.

You let it whisper your worth.

You let it tell you who you are -

and worse - who you are not.

Every step you take, you drag the ghost behind you.

Every word you spit, it has blood on it.

Every dream you start, it dies in the soil of " what they did to me."

You think time will fix it.

You think forgetting will numb it.

You think staying busy will starve it.

But pain is patient.

Pain waits.

Pain will watch you build your empire, then blow it all down from the inside.

You are not outrunning it.

You are not smarter than it.

You are not bigger than it while you are still bowing to it.

You think you are holding on to the past?

Nahhh.

The past is holding on to YOU.

And it will not let go until you face it -

bare, bleeding, screaming -

until you tear the vows up yourself.

Until you call it by its real name,

and stop pretending it is protection.

You are not safe inside your pain.

You are not powerful because you are still mad.

You are not alive because you refuse to feel.

You are just stuck.

And it is killing you slow.

One choice at a time.

One lie at a time.

One lonely night at a time.