The Math Never Works

I am surrounded by beauty.
By love that shows up with gentle hands
and eyes that see me clearly.
By people who speak kindness like a first language,
who build me back without ever asking
why I broke.

I have laughter now.
I have safety,
softness,
rooms where my name is spoken with reverence,
not recoil.
I am held—
truly held—
by the kind of love I once believed I didn’t deserve.

And still…
there is an emptiness that echoes.
A hunger that refuses to hush.

Because the people who raised me
taught me something cruel:
that love is sharp.
That safety is conditional.
That to be close to someone
is to endure their venom
and call it home.

I know better now.
I do.
But some lessons root themselves
in the bones of you.

And no matter how many hands reach for me now—
how many voices remind me
I am worthy,
I am loved,
I am good—
there is a part of me still trying
to win a war that should never have been mine.

The math never works.
There is no equation where present love
undoes the pain of past harm.
No formula that erases
the way it felt to be hated
by the people who were supposed to cherish me first.

So I sit in the contrast.
In the miracle of the love I’ve found
and the shadow of the love I never had.

And I mourn them both.
Because somehow,
that is the shape
of healing?