COMING OUT 1

This is as hard as climbing a steep, crooked lane with a stone pressing into your heel inside your boot. Yet all I am doing is pressing keys and laying down letters. Letters that carry everything I feel. And maybe that is the problem. I feel too much. Sometimes I wonder whether this is how life is supposed to feel, or whether I have simply been sacrificing myself while carrying emotions that were never mine to hold. This is heavy, I know. But it feels right. Because I have finally reached the point where I can say: ENOUGH is ENOUGH. Enough choosing everyone else before choosing myself. I choose me...whatever that means, whatever that becomes. I am choosing to feel my own skin for once. I am choosing to speak my mind and live my truth for once. I have spent too long protecting people who never protected me. I am choosing to love myself the way I have loved others. I am choosing to listen to myself the way I have listened to everyone else. No one ever paid attention to what mattered to me, not with the devotion I gave to every relationship I ever held. Romantic, platonic, undefined… I gave fully, quietly, endlessly. My heart has bled. My heart has cried. And now it is time I nurse it. Time I wipe its tears. I have been the fixer for far too long. Now it is my turn to fix myself. No more masquerading. No more shrinking in fear of what might happen if I chose myself — especially when the things I feared happened anyway. So this time, I am leaving. Not for them. For me. I choose my peace. I choose to rebuild my heart, piece by piece. If that sounds cruel, forgive me. Because every time you chose to leave, leaving me to mop up the pain alone, that was cruelty too. You may not have meant it, but it hurt all the same. I am not locking doors out of spite or revenge. I am closing them because I finally understand that if I do not pick myself up from the floor, no one else will. For years I have been present, available, loyal — and still felt invisible. Now I am choosing that invisibility differently. I am becoming absent from the places that erased me and present in my own life. I am letting go of your hands. I am holding mine now. There were countless times I was breaking and still showed up. I carried my mess quietly; I never smeared my pain onto any of you. You never even knew how much I held together behind the scenes. But now, for once, I am releasing your hand. Yes, it will burn. But it will be a single fire that fades, instead of the slow, endless burn I have endured for years. I know I am a lot. Stubborn, emotional, ambitious. Some of you called it a saviour complex, this need to fix broken people. I thought I was doing good, but somewhere along the way, I broke myself trying to heal everyone else. Everything I was has brought me here. So forgive me if my leaving hurts you — though I doubt it will as much as staying hurt me. I am coming out. Not for acceptance. Not for understanding. But for myself. And this time, I hope I survive.