I Regret All The Time I Spent Trying

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

I regret
all the time I spent trying
to be loved
by something that only knew
how to take.

I kept arriving
with softer versions of myself—
sandpapering my edges
until I was something
you could hold
without discomfort.

I mistook endurance
for devotion.

I thought if I bent far enough,
if I translated myself
into a language you understood,
if I made my needs
small enough to miss—
you might finally see me
as worth keeping.

So I practised disappearing.

I laughed when it wasn’t funny.
I forgave before the wound
had even decided to close.
I called it patience
when it was really
abandonment—
mine.

There were moments
I almost chose myself.

Fleeting, electric flashes
of clarity
where I could feel my own name
sitting heavy on my tongue,
waiting to be spoken
like a boundary.

But I swallowed it.

Again.
And again.
And again.

Because hope
can be a cruel architect—
building futures out of nothing
but the promise
that one day
you might become
what I needed.

You never did.

And I kept renovating
a house
that was never meant
to shelter me.

I regret
how long it took me to understand
that love should not require
self-erasure.

That being chosen
should not feel like
performing.

That I was not difficult—
I was simply
unmet.

I regret
every version of me
that stayed.

Every quiet compromise
that carved me smaller.

Every time I turned away
from my own reflection
because it was easier
to believe
you were right.

But most of all—

I regret
how easily I left myself
waiting
on the other side
of your indifference.

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Poetry by Britt Wolfe: