Content Warning: **
contains themes of emotional abuse, trauma, gaslighting, and healing from toxic relationships.
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There was a time I called it love—
that swing between cruelty and kisses.
One moment, silence like a storm held in the throat,
the next, a necklace left on my pillow,
an apology wrapped in gold.
I learned to flinch at both.
They pulled the pendulum
with hands that always smiled.
I lived at the center of its swing,
never falling, never flying,
just suspended—
believing pain must be earned
and kindness, a prize for obedience.
Love came in riddles.
It said: “You’re too much,”
then whispered, “Don’t leave me.”
It said: “No one else would want you,”
then bought roses by the dozen.
It told me I was broken,
then demanded I stay whole.
I shrank to fit their moods.
Measured my worth in how still I could stay,
how quiet I could be.
There were days I swallowed my voice
like it was poison
and thanked them for the silence.
I learned the language of gaslight—
how to doubt the bruise even as it bloomed,
how to question my own reflection.
Was I too sensitive? Too cold?
Too easy to anger?
I asked myself so often
that even the mirror hesitated to answer.
They called it love.
And I, desperate not to be alone,
called it survival.
I stayed.
And in staying, I disappeared—
faded… slowly,
like a photograph left in the sun.
When I cried, I apologized.
When I laughed, I waited for it to be taken back.
That’s what trauma teaches—
how to build walls so high
you forget which side you’re on.
And then,
you arrived.
Not like a savior—
but like a quiet thing.
A question, not a cure.
You didn’t ask for my ruins.
You brought no blueprints.
You simply climbed.
You climbed the walls
with patience and small kindnesses,
spoke gently to the ghosts I had mistaken for myself.
You didn’t rescue me.
You reminded me I was never the fire.
Only the one who walked through it.
You never promised healing.
You never called me beautiful
when I was unraveling.
You simply sat with me
in the rooms I had locked from the inside.
And somehow,
without ever asking me to trust—
I did.
Not all at once.
But enough to believe
that love doesn’t have to ache.
That it can be a steady hand
and a soft place to land.
I still remember the pendulum.
But I do not live inside its arc.
Now, I walk.
And someone walks beside me.
I no longer flinch when the door shuts.
No longer shrink to be held.
I have learned the sound of my own name
spoken without sharpness.
I have learned silence can be soft—
not punishment,
but peace.
There are days I still brace for the swing.
Old ghosts don’t disappear,
they just stop steering.
But now I meet them with open hands,
not fear.
I say: I see you. I survived you.
And they leave a little quicker each time.
Some nights I still wake
waiting for love to hurt.
But then I turn
and find it sleeping next to me—
unchanged, unthreatening.
Not a weapon.
Not a promise.
Just a presence.
And I,
who once mistook survival for love,
have begun to choose differently.
I write my own rules now.
I raise my voice,
not to defend—
but to declare.
I am not the bruises I forgot how to name.
I am not the silence I once begged for.
I am not theirs.
I am the story after the fire.
The garden that grew in the ash.
The voice that returned, hoarse but certain.
I am not healed.
I am healing.
And that is enough.
A bit of a long one so I hope you can give it some time out of your busy day to read it 😁 This poem is a reckoning with the way trauma can distort our understanding of love—and how survival, while necessary, isn’t the same as living. The Pendulum and the Climber explores what it means to unlearn harm, reclaim your voice, and allow love to arrive without demand or disguise. It’s not a story of rescue. It’s a story of return.
For the people still walking through the fire or learning to trust quiet again—this is for you. You are not alone, and you are not too late.
