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.
~poem 2 of 5 from my collection— “stages of grief.”
Anger—the second stage of grief. This poem isn’t just about heartbreak; it’s about the fury that comes after. The rage at being lied to, at being used, at staying when you should have left. It’s the fire that burns through the illusions, the realization that love was never meant to feel like suffering. But beneath the anger is something deeper—strength. Because anger, when faced, becomes fuel. And that fire? It’s what finally sets you free.
~written for a friend (Female POV)
