Worth the Weight of a Conversation

When my mind was a dim room

and the walls leaned inward,

nobody knocked.

Nobody asked why the light was gone.

I learned to breathe in the dark

and stitch myself together

with shaking hands.

When I was drowning quietly,

I sank without a ripple.

I could have vanished,

and the world would have kept walking.

Silence was the only witness

to the nights I almost disappeared.

But when I rose—

when my voice stopped trembling,

when I could stand without folding,

when I could speak without breaking—

suddenly they remembered my name.

Suddenly I mattered.

Suddenly I was worth the weight

of a conversation.

They cared only when I was shining,

never when I was shattering.

They wanted the version of me

that could carry the room,

not the one curled on the floor

trying to survive the storm.

So I became my own shelter.

My own rescue.

My own witness.

I dragged myself out of the wreckage

with no map, no guide,

just the stubborn belief

that I deserved to live.

Now when they reach for me,

I remember the quiet—

the way it swallowed me whole.

And I keep my distance,

not out of anger,

but out of truth.

I survived without them.

I will continue without them.

I am no longer a ghost

in my own life.