Until It Hurts

I said I would love myself.

But I didn’t know it meant

holding my own hand

through the fire

and telling myself

“we are not going back.”

I didn’t know

self-love would taste like silence,

like deleting numbers I used to beg,

like walking past mirrors

and seeing a stranger

who finally stopped shape-shifting.

Loving myself meant

not rescuing people

who threw me in the water.

It meant saying

“this still hurts”

without calling it home.

I used to think healing was soft—

incense, journals, candles, glow-ups.

But loving myself

has felt more like

screaming into pillows

and not answering calls

from people I once wanted to die for.

I love myself

until it hurts—

because for too long

I hurt myself

just to feel loved.

So now I stay in the ache

if it keeps me from the lie.

Now I cut the fantasy

before it grows teeth.

Now I hold the truth,

even when it burns.

Because the pain of honesty

is the only thing

that ever set me free.

-The Soft Witness