He is her mirror,
The one she stands before
Whether things are good or bad.
Until she walks away,
She doesn’t understand
The cracks spreading
Across her face,
Ignoring the obvious
She applies more makeup.
Though she’s gone,
Her presence lingers,
Soon to follow.

In front of her mirror,
She could speak as freely
As she wanted,
Be seen for who she is.
In front of family and friends,
She’s quiet,
Acting out of appearance,
Ignoring the space, she thought
Was empty.

She doesn’t think about it
Until a friend brings it up.
Talking about her own love life,
A place she feels secure.
Her friend’s smile, big and bright,
While she speaks.
She thinks of him,
Her mirror.
No matter how bad she feels.
He finds a way
To make her feel better.
If something is off,
He’s quick to point it out.
He’s always there when
She needs him.
She never had to speak
To be seen when he was around.
The only place she only felt whole.
The cracks on her face shows

You stayed.
Through lies that burned like acid in your veins,
through the silence that felt louder than any fight,
you stayed.
Because love, when it’s real, isn’t supposed to break,
isn’t supposed to twist itself into something cruel.
And yet, it did.

You stayed.
Even when the truth sliced through you,
when every corner of your mind whispered, leave.
You stayed.

Not because you were weak,
but because you loved so fiercely it destroyed you.
You thought if you held on tighter,
if you poured yourself into his hollow promises,
maybe—just maybe—
you’d be enough to fix what was already broken.

But love should never feel like drowning.
Never feel like chains tightening around your chest.
It isn’t supposed to leave you picking up pieces of yourself from the floor.

He cheated— not just on you,
but on your trust you handed him so freely, on the innocence you never thought he’d betray.
and still, you stayed—
because leaving felt like giving up on everything you thought you’d built together.

And that’s the part no one understands:
How staying wasn’t easier—it was killing you slowly.
How leaving felt like sawing off a limb,
because he had buried himself so deep in you
that ripping him out meant bleeding.

And when you left,
you weren’t walking out of love—
you were clawing your way out of the wreckage.
You left pieces of yourself in that ruin,
parts of you that begged to stay,
that whispered:
What if this time he changes?
But you silenced them.
Because staying wasn’t love anymore—it was survival.

For a while, you hated him.
The taste of his name was bile in your throat,
his face a shadow you couldn’t escape.
But hate is like a wildfire,
and you were already ash.

So you let it go.
Now, when you think of him,
you don’t burn anymore.
You don’t cry.
You only feel pity—
for a man too hollow
to know what love is,
too lost to see the beauty
he threw away.

Now, you carry the echoes of those days.
The doubt, the guilt, the questions that won’t leave.
But there’s also this:
The strength it took to leave,
to burn down the life you thought was yours,
to walk into the unknown with nothing but yourself.

Now, the scars ache, don’t they?
Not just from all that he did,
but from what you let yourself endure.

And every time you close your eyes,
you see the naive girl who stayed—
the one who thought love meant sacrifice,
the one who didn’t know her worth.

But listen to me:
You were not foolish for loving.
You were not weak for trying.
You are a warrior for leaving.

He didn’t break you.
You tore yourself out of the cycle
before it swallowed you whole.
You chose pain over numbness,
You chose the heartbreak that shattered you into pieces,
because staying meant abandoning yourself entirely.

You chose to feel every jagged edge of leaving,
every sob that racked your chest at midnight,
every moment of questioning
if love was supposed to feel like dying a little every day.

And even though walking away
felt like peeling your own skin, layer by layer,
you knew—
you knew—
that pain was the only path to freedom.

And now, you walk forward,
carrying the weight of what was lost,
and the quiet, unyielding strength of what you reclaimed.

And maybe one day,
when the scars ache a little less,
you’ll see it for what it was—
not a loss, but a reclaiming.
Not the end of love,
but the beginning of finding it again—
this time, where it feels like home.

I have friends.
That’s what I tell myself when I sit with them,
pretending to belong.
But they don’t see me.
Not really.

To them, I’m the quiet one,
The innocent one,
The dumb one.
The child playing at adulthood,
Too naive to understand the world they walk.
They think I don’t notice how they talk down to me,
The way they smile when I speak of my dreams.
Like I’m too soft to notice
the sharpness of their words.

But I am not a child,
And I am not innocent.
I am a girl who learned
How to smile through the ache,
How to laugh through the hollow,
How to pretend that I don’t feel the walls closing in.

They think I’m easy to fool,
That I won’t catch the way they roll their eyes
When I speak of the things I love.
The toys that make me smile,
The lines of  books that cling to my soul,
The songs I bury myself in &
the piano and violin melodies
that feel like home in a world too loud.
All dismissed, waved off, ridiculed,
Labeled childish, unworthy of their time.
Like my joy is an inconvenience to their lives.

But I notice.
I notice everything.
I notice how they’ve built me in their minds—
A fragile thing,
easy to break, easy to ignore.
They have no idea what it’s like to be me.

They don’t know how my hands shake
When I hold back tears in front of them.
They don’t know how many words I swallow
Just to keep the peace,
How many pieces of myself I’ve hidden
To make them more comfortable.

They laugh at me.
Not with me.
They think I don’t see it,
That I don’t feel it—
The subtle cruelty hidden in their jokes,
The way they twist my softness into stupidity.

I am but a pitiful inclusion
of their conversations.
A mere placeholder in their group.
A shadow they barely notice
Until they need to feel smarter, stronger, better.

And I let them.
Because it’s easier to stay quiet,
To let them believe they’re right,
Than to fight against the weight of their indifference.

In the end, I shrink.
I fold myself into something smaller,
Something quieter,
Until I am nothing more than the version they created—
A shadow of myself,
Easy to laugh at, easy to control.

But inside, I’m screaming.
Inside, I’m crying.
Because I don’t know how to explain
What it feels like to be surrounded
And still feel like the loneliest person in the room.

They think they know me.
But how could they?
They’ve never looked past the smile I force,
Never wondered why my hands tremble,
Why my breath falters,
Why my voice sometimes dies in my throat.

I am surrounded by people,
But I am alone in a way I can’t explain.
Alone in the crowd,
Alone in their presence,
Alone in the silence I hide behind.

I sit there, smiling, nodding,
surrounded by their voices,
Their laughter, their noise.
And yet I am alone.
Because they will never understand
the weight I carry,
the weight of a heart that beats in isolation.

I pretend like I don’t care
When they say I’m childish,
That my love for vanilla makes me small.
But inside, I am clawing at my own skin,
Begging for someone to see me—
Not the version of me they created,
But the real me.

Everyone likes vanilla.
I like it a bit more.
But they don’t get it, do they?
How something so simple
can mean everything when you feel so ******* lost.
They mock me for it—
Like it’s some childish obsession,
Like it’s a flaw that I’m drawn to the soft,
The pure,
The things that make me feel whole
In a world that’s always trying to tear me apart.

They look at my quiet smile, my careful hands,
And slap a label on my skin: innocent.
Like I’m some sticker they can peel off,
Stick wherever they please
and forget.

But I am not what they think I am.
I am not a word whispered behind cupped hands,
Not the soft thing they’ve mistaken for weak

I love stickers.
Bright, bold, beautiful things
That I press into notebooks and corners of my world,
Little pieces of colour in the chaos I can’t control.
But I am not a sticker.
I am not something they can pin down,
Label me whatever they ******* want to.
I am what I am,
It is what it is,
so deal with it or leave.

If the consequence of me being me
is loneliness,
then so be it.

I am many things,
But I am not their innocent doll.
I am not a joke,
I am not their fool.
I am not just a sticker.
I am not just their label.
I am a mosaic of cracks and scars,
and one day, I will tear these labels from my skin
and show them the strength they never saw.
Who knows,
maybe they might finally realise,
why hurricanes are named after people.

Too bad they’ll never take the time
to know that.
They’re too busy talking over me,
too busy writing their own stories
on the pages of my silence.

I don’t need their pity.
I don’t need their approval.
But God, sometimes I wish
just one of them would stop
and look at me long enough
to see the storm I carry,
to hear the screams I choke back every day.

Because I am tired of being invisible.
Tired of being their afterthought.
Tired of being underestimated,
of being seen but never known.
I am tired of sitting among friends
and still feeling utterly, completely,
Alone.

And I inevitably find myself wondering —
Will anyone ever know this loneliness?
Will anyone ever stop long enough
to see the girl who hides behind this smile?
Or am I doomed to disappear,
lost in a crowd that never bothered to look closer?

i believe it was a tuesday morning!
i remember i had a reason to wake up -
to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste
from the tube.
to get right back in the ******* loop.

i believe i caught a glimpse of a child
through the foggy bathroom mirror,
laced with my minty breath.
it felt strange...
i took offense at his looks,
the way he eyed me down.
in his defense though,
i had caught him with his guards down.

he didn't say much,
not that he did anyway.
just nodded softly at me,
whispered almost,
'alright! guess i'll be going then...'
with a flicker of a smile
never to be seen again.

i believed at the time it was best for him
to not see the light on my face go dim
didn't realize then i'd pay such a solemn price;
as I let him go, not thinking twice.

i believe it came quite naturally to me -
finding good reasons not to be.
that day, i found yet another;
it was just enough to help me see -
the error of my ways...
like a rat in a maze, how i end up
reliving the worst of my days.

i still believe i could turn things around.
give the kid a reason to be proud.
i'd whisper softly into the foggy bathroom mirror,
'we're ok, little buddy...
everything's going to be ok!'
i believe i could get him to say,
'alright... i'll stay!'