The Weight I Can’t Put Down

Some days, it feels like I am the ruin.
Like my name itself is the echo of everything that’s wrong.
I move through the world carrying shame like it was stitched into my skin.
No matter how quiet I am, how careful, how good I try to be—
I still feel like the problem.
Like the reason people leave.
Like the reason nothing sticks.
Like a cracked mirror no one wants to look at for too long.

I hate myself in ways that feel older than memory.
I speak to myself in a voice I wouldn’t use on anyone else,
cutting myself down before the world even has to try.
Because maybe if I punish myself first, it’ll hurt less when they do.

But it doesn’t.
It never has.

I feel like I was born broken.
Like love is something other people are allowed to keep,
and success is something that stops just short of where I’m standing.
Like I am the stain in the corner of the room everyone pretends not to notice.

And the worst part?
Sometimes I believe it.
I believe I am too much.
Too damaged.
Too hard to hold.
Too unworthy to ask for anything more than the scraps I’m given.

But even in this—
even in the wreckage of who I think I am—
some part of me still wants to be wrong about it.

Some part of me is still whispering:
Please. Let me be wrong.