Imagine loving someone and slowly learning how to go quiet.
Not because you have nothing to say, but because you’ve said it all before. You’ve asked gently. You’ve explained carefully. You’ve named what hurts and how it affects the child watching it all unfold. And still, presence keeps losing to escape.
You watch responsibility be set down in favor of a drink. You carry what’s left because someone has to. When your voice finally rises, it’s not anger—it’s grief. And somehow, even that gets turned into a list of everything you should be grateful for.
So you stop speaking.
Not to punish. Not to withdraw. But because every conversation costs more than it gives. Because silence asks less of you than being misunderstood again.
And one day you realize that the hardest truth isn’t that they didn’t change—
It’s that you did, just long enough to survive them.
—Faith Marie(@lolitareincarnated)
