I can’t let go when something’s broken — it’s all I know and it’s all I want now.
Maybe I don’t want to heal.
Maybe I just want to feel something. Even if it burns. Even if it bruises.
I think I’ve made a religion out of ruin. I keep praying at the altar of grief, where each day is a remembrance of something I never really let go of. Keep writing psalms and elegies about people who left, as if ache is the only way I know how to worship.
Because if I’m not hurting, I feel hollow. And in that silence, I start to shake. So I pick at old scabs, say things I don’t mean, start fires in rooms I just finished painting.
I ruin the quiet before it has the chance to become comforting.
Maybe that’s the tragedy: I don’t know how to exist without a little bit of pain tucked under my tongue.
Like a secret.
Like a habit.
Like home.
Maybe I don’t want to heal.
Not really. Not yet.
Because if healing means silence, then I don’t think I know how to survive it. I’ve grown so used to the sound of breaking — glass, hearts, promises — that stillness feels unnatural. Like something’s missing. Like I’m missing.
I say I want peace, but I keep picking fights. Keep throwing words like knives. Not because I want to hurt anyone, but because pain is all I know. I’m not sure where it begins and where I end. Is it me, or is it the pain that defines me?
And I think I’ve confused comfort with chaos. And I don’t know how to want something soft without waiting for it to disappear. Sometimes I think it’s because love has always been tangled with pain. Growing up, it was the only way I saw it.
Maybe that’s why, even when I don’t want to hurt, I end up pushing love away, pulling it closer in a strange, self-destructive embrace. It’s easier to hurt than to feel nothing at all.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t recognise the person staring back. Not because I’ve changed, but because I’ve been performing a choreography of damage for so long that I’ve lost sight of who I was before the show began.
I just keep hurting myself in small ways, again and again.
Like rereading messages I told myself I’d delete.
Like listening to songs that still taste like you.
Like imagining conversations we’ll never have.
Like looking at pictures, pretending I’ll see us differently this time.
Like keeping things I don’t need, just in case I forget how to remember.
Like holding onto people who’ve already left, because I’m afraid of what it means if they truly go.
And yet, deep down, I know this isn’t healthy. I know I shouldn’t crave the burn of the flame, but it’s all I’ve known. The quiet, the stillness, it feels… unfamiliar. So, I ignite little fires, hoping the pain will come alive, hoping it will consume me just enough to make me feel something.
It’s like I’m addicted to ache. Like I only know how to feel through hurting.
Because if nothing’s broken, then what am I supposed to fix?
What’s left of me when I stop bleeding?
Or is there, really, anything left at all?
Have faith, always.
