The Lesson You Taught Me

You told me I was too much.

So I learned to shrink.

Folded myself down

like a letter never sent.

Quieted the parts of me

that made you uncomfortable.

You hit me.

Not always with fists.

Sometimes with silence.

Sometimes with shame.

And I learned how to take it

like a lesson

I never asked to learn.

You said I was lucky

You never left.

I made you do it.

If I would just stop talking,

be better,

it wouldn't happen.

I tried to be better.

Quieter.

Smaller.

I folded myself into positions that

were painful to hold.

But it was never enough,

for you.

You hurt me

because you could.

Because I loved you

and you knew

I didn't know

what love was supposed to feel like.

You made cruelty sound like concern.

Made me think that fear was respect.

You called me dramatic,

overreacting,

ungrateful —

every time I flinched

when you raised your voice

or your hand.

You loved me

like I was a mirror —

only when I thought of how you imagined I would react.

I craved your validation

like oxygen.

I inhaled the aura of all your moods;

I bit my tongue

in the void of all your silences.

You told me

needing anything

was selfish.

That needing gentleness

was weakness.

That I should be thankful

to just be tolerated.

I wasted years

trying to win your love,

with my submission.

But you never softened.

Not for me.

And still—

a part of me

kept waiting for the day

you'd wake up

and realize

how wrong you were.

That I was worthy.

That I was never too much.

That I was never the issue.

But I know better now.

You taught me how to disappear

into myself.

And I'm still unlearning

how to emerge.

I don't miss you.

But sometimes,

I miss the me

that believed

you could change.

I wish I could go back

and pull that young woman

out of your storm.

Tell her she is not too much.

She's not too broken.

Love

should not make you

afraid of coming home at night.

You laughed at the way I cried.

You taught me to feel guilty

for needing comfort.

You taught me to laugh at myself

before you did.

But I'm not laughing now.

I am naming.

I am remembering.

I am refusing

to be kinder to your memory

than you were to me in life.

You don't get to be

a misunderstood woman.

You were cruel.

And I was a child.

Still—

I grew up.

Not because of you.

In spite of you.

You don't get to live in

my mirror anymore.

You don't get to haunt

my motherhood or my joy

or the way I get to say, "I'm proud of you"

to my own children.

I broke the cycle.

I didn't become you.

That's my win.

You were the lesson.

I am the healing.

And I will say it now—

out loud:

You don't get me.