I don't remember the day
the day that I realized you were abusing me
I kept ignoring the fact that mental abuse was just as detrimental as physical
No, you weren't creating bruises, bleeding, or breaks
But I promise you there was damage
I second guess everyone now
I overthink someone else love for me, because I think its pretend, just like yours
Everything was my fault, even when it was very clearly yours
But I begged for you to forgive me for being broken by your mistakes, because I hated when our home was being torn down
I told myself that relationships take work
That if I tried harder to make you happy, then you wouldn't hurt me anymore
I think the thing that got me the most was how good of a liar you became
How easy it was for you to look me right in the eye and tell me a complete lie, and have zero remorse and never feel the stabbing guilt I would've felt.
How do you do that?
How do you feel okay looking at me?
And you know I know you're lying, but I want the lie to be true so badly that I'll ignore everything and pretend we're okay
Because unlike you, I did love you
I wanted to trust you and I wanted us to work, but I didn't have enough love in my heart for the both of us.
I thought I did, but we both know that's not how it works
You can't force someone to be in love with you like I wished you were

I called you as a cry for help
You sat there and talked about your day as I sat in silence
I called you and you didn't listen to me, or you I guess you did, you just didn't really hear me
You could hear my heavy sighs, I know you could picture the tears running down my face
But you didn't care
You don't understand the suffocating feeling anxiety will give you
"Why are you crying?"
"Whats wrong?"
"You're fine."
I can hear you when you say these words to me
I swear I can
But they mean nothing to me
... they mean nothing to my anxiety
My anxiety doesn't care that there is no reason to cry
that there is actually nothing wrong
or that I'm fine
Anxiety will give you 1,000 reason to cry and 1,000 things that are wrong, and 1,000 reasons why you are not fine
How depressing is it that in a world full of opportunities, I see every one of them as something to overthink
I worry you'll leave me for this

You tell yourself you could've prevented it
You say,
"If I just wouldn't have gone out that night
If I just wouldn't have taken that last shot
If I just wouldn't have worn that black shirt that made my ***** look bigger
If I just wouldn't have looked at him
If I just wouldn't have danced that dance
If I just wouldn't have followed him"
Yet somehow,
You were around other men who kept themselves away and respected your home
One boy came and recked it
But,
You blame yourself for something a boy did
How is it that everyone else was able to respect you, yet he wasn't
Yet somehow,
it was your fault?

You never want your daughter to have to go through what you went through
So you tell her, "do not party, do not drink, do not hang out with those people, especially him, do not sneak out of the house, do not get caught up in drugs..."
You tell her that how mad at her you will be if she does these things and how disappointed you will be for her disobeying you
Only because you are trying to protect her from what your mother could not
Not because you don't understand her and why she would and all the temptations and fun that could've happened, but did not
You scare her so much that when she does go to that party and drink too much, or when she gets caught up with that boy, not a man, and he uses her home as a hotel, or when she experiments and goes too far with a drug, with something to take away reality
She will not come to you
She is too ashamed of the disappointment and too afraid of the punishment
That she will not come to you
So her guilt and depression grows like a **** until she cannot house it anymore
So what do you do and how do you protect her from what your mother could not

You were good at it. Pretending to be the person I wanted you to be.
Hiding your mistakes and flaws because you thought that could actually change you. You buried the true self and wore a mask to hide it from me. For a while I had no idea. But then one day, I pushed the mask off and there you were. Little did you know, I loved you more than I did before.