the bridge was eating me alive

i think people love to call staying strength because it makes the suffering look prettier. it gives the bruises a name that sounds less embarrassing. loyalty. patience. devotion. growth. all those soft words people slap over a wound when they do not want to admit something is rotting underneath. but there is nothing holy about standing in the same place while it keeps taking pieces out of you. there is nothing romantic about shrinking yourself small enough to fit inside something that stopped caring whether you could breathe.

and that is the part i had to choke down. i did not walk away because i stopped loving it. i walked away because loving it was starting to feel like hating myself. i kept trying to explain. i kept trying to forgive. i kept trying to be softer, quieter, easier, less wounded, less angry, less needy, less human. i kept handing over chances like they were loose change from a pocket i could not afford to empty. and every time i told myself, one more time. one more conversation. one more repair. one more night of swallowing the truth so nobody had to hear me break out loud.

but eventually your body starts telling the truth your mouth keeps trying to protect everyone from. your chest gets tight. your stomach turns. your peace disappears. you start feeling tired in places sleep cannot touch. you look around and realize you are not standing in love anymore. you are standing in a place that trained you to betray yourself and then called your obedience beautiful. and fuck that. i am not interested in being the kind of loyal that leaves me unrecognizable.

so maybe i did build the bridge. maybe my hands are all over it. maybe i prayed over it, cried over it, defended it, and kept trying to make it strong enough to hold what it was never willing to carry. maybe burning it hurts because it was not meaningless. maybe that is the whole damn point. i am allowed to grieve the thing and still refuse to go back to it. i am allowed to love what it could have been and still choose what i deserve. i am allowed to light the match with shaking hands and call it mercy.

some endings are not failure. some endings are the first honest breath you take after years of pretending the smoke was not killing you. and if the only way back to myself is through the fire, then let it burn. i have spent enough of my life being the bridge for people who never cared if i made it to the other side.

with ink + bloom, 🌻