I’ve never been the kind of person
who saves themselves.
I save others—
because it’s easier to drown saving them
than admit that I don’t know how to swim.

Call it a god complex.
Call it desperation.
Call it what happens
when you’ve spent your whole life
trying to make your bleeding useful.

I don’t save people to help them.
I save them to feel alive.
I pour myself into the cracks of their pain,
not out of kindness,
but because I’m terrified of my own emptiness.

I don’t know what I am without their chaos
to give me purpose.
Their wounds give mine meaning,
their shattering distracts me from the fact
that I’ve already fallen apart.

I don’t fix people out of love.
I fix them because I can’t stand
to look at someone else
and see the cracks I can’t fill in myself.
I fix them because if I can make them whole,
then maybe—
maybe—I’m not beyond saving.

But who am I kidding?
I don’t heal them.
I make them dependent.
I take their pain
and twist it into something I can hold.
I turn them into mirrors—
polished and sharp,
so I can see myself in their cracks.
I pour myself into their emptiness,
patch their wounds with pieces of my own soul,
then hate them for taking too much.

I feed them pieces of me until they can stand,
and then I hate them for leaving
when I have nothing left.

So I break them again.
Not because I want to—
but because I need to.
Because if they stop needing me,
then what the hell am I?

I press my fingers into their wounds,
just to watch them flinch—
just to make sure they still feel.

Because I don’t.
Not anymore.
Not in ways that matter.

And they thank me for it.
They thank me.
Because I’m careful with my cruelty,
quiet in my destruction.

It just feels disgusting,
the way I feed on their pain.
The way I tell myself
this is how it feels to matter.

I hate it.
I hate that I need them broken,
that I’ve built my worth on their dependence.
I hate that I call it love
when it’s anything but.

Because love doesn’t look like this.
It doesn’t look like carving yourself into pieces
just to fill the void in someone else.
It doesn’t look like giving away everything you are,
just to make sure they’ll stay.

But that’s all I know how to do.

I keep them close by breaking them slowly—
not enough to destroy them,
just enough to remind them
that I’m the only one
who knows how to put them back together.

And when they realize they don’t need me,
when they leave with their newfound strength,
I crumble.
Not because they’re gone,
but because they’ve taken the only proof I had
that I’m not worthless.

And I tell myself I don’t care.
That they’ll be back.
That I’ll find someone else
to fix, to break, to need me.

But deep down, I’m terrified.
Terrified of being alone with myself.
Terrified of the silence that screams louder
than any plea for help ever could.

But I don’t tell them that.
I don’t tell them I’m afraid of being alone—
that without their brokenness to distract me,
I’d have to face my own.
I don’t tell them that every time they thank me
for saving them,
it feels like a knife in my gut—
because I know the truth.

I am not a healer.
I’m not a savior.
I am a god of ruin.
I’m a parasite.
worshipped by those
too shattered to see the blood on my hands.

I live off their wounds.
I drink their tears like holy water.
I plant myself in their darkest places
and call it love.

And when they leave—
because they always leave—
I tell myself I deserve it.
That I deserve the emptiness they leave behind.
That this is what happens
when you make a home out of someone else’s pain.

But it doesn’t stop the ache.
The gnawing hunger for something I’ll never have.
The desperate, clawing need
to matter to someone,
even if it means ruining them to keep them close.

But I don’t stop.
I can’t.
Because I don’t know how to.
I don’t know how to be whole.
Because I don’t know how to love
without making it hurt.
And I guess,
I don’t deserve to.

I don’t know how to be loved
without being needed.
And I don’t know how to be needed
without making sure they’ll never leave.

And maybe one day,
I’ll stop pretending to be something I’m not.
Maybe one day,
I’ll let them go before I destroy them.
Maybe one day,
I’ll stop carving my survival into their scars.

But today isn’t that day.
Today, I’ll keep burning them,
keep breaking them,
keep tearing them down—
again and again.
because it’s all I know how to do.