You Called It Love (But I Know What It Was)

You called it love—
but only when I made myself small enough
to fit inside your fragile version of the truth.
Only when I twisted myself into shapes
that spared you from feeling the weight
of what you’d done.

When I swallowed my own voice
to protect the sound of yours.
When I stitched up my wounds
with silence
and called it peace.

You called it love
while wrapping my truth in razor wire,
while dragging my name across the floor
and telling me to say thank you.

You weaponized concern.
You gaslit grief.
You called it protection,
but it was control.

You made me the villain
in the story of my own survival.
And when I didn’t die from it—
when I dared to heal—
you called that betrayal.

You told me I was delusional
for remembering the parts you tried to bury.
You said I was forgetting,
but only when I dared to remember something tender
about the very person
you needed me to hate or fear—
because their softness made your cruelty real.

You called it love.
But love does not live in double binds.
Love does not punish a child for speaking aloud
what everyone else has agreed to deny.

You told me I was too sensitive,
then blamed me when your cruelty cut too deep.
You told me I was too cold,
then punished me for the distance I placed
between your damage and my soul.

You dehumanized me
because seeing me clearly
meant seeing yourself too.
And that was never something
you had the courage to do.

So you discredited me.
Dismissed me.
Distorted me.

But you don’t get to do that anymore.

Because I remember.
And I believe myself, the only truth teller.

You can keep your twisted truths
and brittle excuses.
I’m not here to convince you
of what you did.

I’m here to name it.
To write it down.
To plant it in the ground
and let the truth bloom
without ever asking for your permission.

I am not your redemption story.
Not your scapegoat.
Not your mirror.
Not your casualty.

I am the silence you can’t fill.
The reckoning you never saw coming.
The daughter who walked away—
and meant it.

You say you did your best.

But I survived your best.

And no—
I’m not coming back.

Not because I hate you.
But because I have finally remembered
what it means to love someone
without disappearing myself into the process.

And this time,
that someone is me.