Dear Me,

Dear Me,

You almost didn’t make it.

And that truth is terrifying to write,

but even more terrifying to feel

because I remember the moment you gave up.

Not out of weakness,

but because you were just so tired of

holding everything together

with shaking hands and a breaking heart.

You didn’t want to die.

You just didn’t want to hurt anymore.

& I get it.

God, do I get it.

But I need you to hear me now,

I am so fucking sorry.

I am sorry I didn’t protect you.

I am sorry I didn’t hold you tighter

when the world was too loud

and your heart was too bruised.

Sorry I turned my back on you in the moments

you needed the most love.

& to the little girl inside of me

the one still curled up in fear,

who cries quietly in the corners of my soul.

I am sorry I became another person who didn’t listen.

I am sorry I shamed your sadness.

I am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner

that you never needed to earn love.

You were born worthy of it.

You never needed to be quieter.

Smaller.

Better.

You were already enough.

You still are.

You should’ve been told that love was not something you had to beg for.

That your tears were never too much.

That your trauma did not make you unlovable

it made you a survivor.

You are still here.

Breathing.

Bleeding.

Becoming.

I know the pain still lingers.

I know some days feel like you’re walking through fire barefoot.

But know this:

I will not abandon you again.

Not now.

Not ever.

I promise to love you when you’re sobbing on the bathroom floor.

I promise to stay when your thoughts turn cruel and dark.

I promise to listen when your body screams from the inside out.

I promise to forgive you.

You are not a mistake.

You are not a burden.

You are not the darkness that tried to swallow you.

You are the light that survived it.

I may not know how to heal yet.

But I know I want to try.

For the little girl who waited her whole life to be seen.

For the woman I’m still becoming.

For the chance to create something new from all this wreckage.

I don’t have all the answers.

But I have this moment.

And in this moment,

I choose to stay.

I choose to love you.

I choose us.

No more shame.

No more hiding.

No more pretending I don’t matter.

I matter.

& I am never going back to the silence that almost took me.

With everything I have left,

Me