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The One Who Kept Surviving (Darker version)
People call me quiet.
They do not know
how many screams
are buried beneath my silence.
I learned long ago
that speaking could be dangerous.
That words could be twisted,
thrown back,
used to carve fresh wounds
into skin already bruised.
So I became the girl
who swallowed her feelings whole.
The girl who smiled
while her world was burning.
The girl who learned
that monsters sometimes live
inside your own home.
My childhood still follows me.
Not as memories.
As shadows.
In every loud voice.
Every slammed door.
Every sudden movement.
Every moment
my chest tightens
for reasons I cannot explain.
The past does not stay buried.
It digs its way back
through cracks in the floorboards
of my mind.
Some nights,
I still feel like that little girl.
The one staring at locked doors.
The one wondering
if tomorrow would hurt less.
The one praying
for someone to notice
she was drowning.
No one came.
So I learned to save myself.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Now I carry scars
nobody can see.
Anxiety sits beside me
like an unwanted ghost.
PTSD sleeps with one eye open.
And exhaustion wraps itself
around my bones
like a second skin.
Still,
the world expects me to keep going.
Be the mother.
Pay the bills.
Fix the problems.
Carry the weight.
Smile through the cracks.
But some days
I am held together
by nothing more
than stubbornness and caffeine.
Some days
I wonder what it feels like
to be taken care of.
To be the one allowed to fall apart.
To stop being everyone's shelter
while standing in the rain myself.
And yet...
My heart refuses to harden.
That is my blessing.
That is my curse.
I love people
with hands full of bruises.
I offer kindness
from a soul
that has known cruelty.
I keep giving
when life taught me
most people only take.
Maybe that makes me foolish.
Maybe it makes me strong.
I no longer know the difference.
I only know
that I am still here.
Still breathing.
Still fighting.
Still dreaming
of a home that belongs to me.
A future that doesn't feel borrowed.
A life where survival
isn't the only thing
I'm good at.
Until then,
I walk through darkness
with shaking hands
and a stubborn heart.
Because the truth is—
Death visited my story
more than once.
Fear made a home inside me.
Pain left its fingerprints
on every chapter.
But none of them
got to write the ending.
I did.
And every page after this one
belongs to the woman
who refused to disappear.
The one who kept surviving.
