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