"I AM NOT THE RUIN THAT MADE ME"
I was just a girl, small against the vast and merciless world, whispering wishes into a starless sky, begging for anything—anyone—to pull my mind from the quiet hell I called home. Maybe I wanted to be saved. Maybe I wanted a witness. Maybe I just wanted to feel like I wasn’t fading.
Why did I feel this way?
Anger.
Pain.
Fear.
Despair.
A darkness bloomed inside me, thick as swamp fog, clinging to my ribs. The demons in my head—sharp‑tongued, serpent‑slick—dragged their claws through every tender place I tried to protect. They named themselves my masters. They made me kneel. They made me doubt the shape of my own shadow.
“Fuck you,” I whispered to the girl in the mirror.
Through fractured glass, golden‑brown eyes stared back—wide, sleepless, haunted. My trembling hands tangled in my wild curls as if trying to pull the storm out by the roots.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
My throat burned with the echo of my own voice. My skull felt like a hurricane had taken up residence inside it, spinning, spinning, spinning until I couldn’t tell where the wind ended and I began.
“No one would miss you,” he used to say. “Why are you still here? You’ll never be anything.”
Through the broken mirror, I watched myself laugh—a hollow, cracked sound—while tears carved rivers down my cheeks. I laughed because I believed him. I laughed because cruelty had become my lullaby. I laughed because I didn’t know any other language.
His words were cannon fire, each one splintering something soft inside me. Over time, the shrapnel became familiar. Expected. Normal. I heard things a girl should never hear. I learned lessons no woman should ever be taught. I mistook harm for devotion. I mistook survival for love.
I was supposed to learn what tenderness looked like. Instead, I learned to brace for impact. I learned to shrink. I learned to disappear.
But I am not a body to be used.
I am not a vessel for someone else’s rage.
I am not a ghost in my own life.
I am not worthless.
I am not crazy.
I am not the names they spit when their tempers flare.
What I am is powerful.
What I am is beautiful in the way storms are beautiful—dangerous, electric, impossible to ignore.
What I am is desirable, clever, sharp, and rising.
What I am is perfectly imperfect, stitched together with firelight and stubborn hope.
What I am is a woman who deserves a love that does not draw blood—a love that holds without haunting,
a love that warms instead of wounds.
<3 the unusual woman <3,
xoxo
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