What you broke, I had to rebuild

I didn’t know hatred could bloom

in the same place where I once fucking clung

to the idea of you

held on like you were a lifeline

when really, you were the goddamn anchor

dragging me under.

And the worst part?

There was a time

a real, honest, fucked-up time

when I truly believed you loved me.

I swallowed every “I love you,”

every apology,

every promise you made

with tears on your face

and lies on your tongue.

I thought your love was real

I built my whole world on that illusion.

But distance,

silence,

and having to choose myself

taught me the truth

I didn’t want to face.

you never loved me,

not in the way you said.

It was all fake

a performance,

a manipulation,

a convenient story you told

to keep me from leaving.

I called it love.

But it was a bruise wearing cologne,

a chokehold pretending to be home.

A bond made of fear,

rewired nerves,

and the stupid fucking hope

that one day

you’d stop hurting me

long enough to notice I was dying.

When the trauma bond finally snapped,

it was quiet

a tiny, sharp crack

deep inside my ribs.

Like something that had been held too tightly

finally said, enough.

And then I saw you.

Not as the father of my children

that piece of you I’ll always respect

but the man who broke me

piece by shaking piece,

until I couldn’t even recognize

the woman in the mirror.

I didn’t hate you when I loved you.

I hated myself for staying.

But once the fog lifted,

once my heart stopped confusing danger

for devotion,

the truth hit like a punch in the fucking face

I do hate you.

But not in a petty, bitter way

in a survival,

scorched-earth,

you-will-never-own-me-again way.

A clean, burning hatred

that grows in the hollow places

you carved out.

And still,

I’ll always love you

in the one way left

as the father of my children,

the reason they breathe,

the half of them

I could never fucking regret.

But I will forever hate

the way you shattered me,

forced me to rebuild myself

from splinters,

from ash,

from pain I never owed you.

I rebuilt myself

in the ruins

you left behind.

You left me.

Not the other way around.

And I won’t paint it as freedom

when it feels more like standing barefoot

in the wreckage of a life

I thought I understood.

I’m strong

but strength doesn’t keep the nights warm.

I’m scared

because I don’t know who I am

without the constant chaos of loving you.

I’m vulnerable

because some twisted part of me

still aches for what I thought we had,

still wonders if I’ll ever love anyone

with the same desperate, blinding intensity

I once gave to you.

And the truth is,

I let strangers trace the cracks you left,

I Ask for someone else’s hands to steady

what you broke in me.

Not out of desire

but out of desperation.

The need for evidence

that I wasn’t destroyed,

that I could still be wanted,

still be seen,

still be loved by someone

who wasn’t you.

Because you made me believe

I am nothing on my own.

This isn’t rebirth.

It’s aftermath.

It’s the quiet, shaking moment

after the storm tears through

and you realize you’re still alive

even if you don’t know how to be.

I’m not who I was

because you destroyed her.

I’m who I am

because had to walked away

and never look back.

And that

that is the very first thing

you gave me

that didn’t come wrapped

in pain.