No-Win, No More: For The Ones Who Keep Surviving

They built a maze from their own denial,
then called you lost for trying to find the way out.
Every turn you took, a trap.
Every breath, too loud.
Too much.
Not enough.
Always wrong.
Never yours.

They served you silence for breakfast
and shamed you for starving.
Then force-fed you their rewritten stories
and called it love.
But only if you swallowed.
Whole.
Unquestioning.
Grateful.

They whispered that your memories were lies,
then scolded you for forgetting the truth.
Truth, of course, being theirs.
Only theirs.

You tried to make a life from broken pieces,
but every time you glued your heart back together,
they stomped through the wreckage and asked
why it was still cracked.

What they didn’t count on
was your voice growing stronger
in the echo of their contradictions.
What they didn’t see
was you learning to walk
through the wreckage with grace—
not to please them,
but to leave them.

Because you don’t owe your soul
to the people who tore it apart.
You don’t have to win their games
when they’re rigged against your becoming.

Let them call you delusional.
Let them say you forgot.
You remember enough.
You remember what it cost you to stay.
You remember who you were before their war
and who you are now that you’ve laid down the sword.

You’re not in the maze anymore.

You are standing in the light.

And darling—
it is yours.