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I didn’t need fixing.

I needed someone who understood

that loving me meant standing in a storm

without asking the rain to be quieter.

My mind is not gentle.

It splits.

It spirals.

It begs and bites and burns all at once.

I told you that.

You nodded

but you never learned how to stay.

You loved me in errands.

In tasks.

In showing up when things were calm enough to manage.

And I tried to call that safety.

But when the demons came

when my chest was a war zone

and my thoughts turned feral

you stepped back.

I needed arms, not answers.

Pressure, not solutions.

Someone who understood that sometimes

holding me meant getting hurt too.

Because loving me was never clean.

I am the girl who cries quietly

so she doesn’t scare the person she loves.

The girl who fights her own brain

while pretending she’s fine

because she learned early

that need makes people leave.

A Daddy doesn’t turn away.

A Daddy doesn’t say this is too much

when his little one is drowning.

A Daddy knows

that protection sometimes means standing still

while chaos claws at both of you.

You wanted devotion without the cost.

Obedience without the aftermath.

My softness

And not my survival.

And that is where you failed me.

I loved you with everything I had.

But love is not acts of service

when someone is unraveling on the floor.

Love is staying.

Even when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

I didn’t need you to save me.

I needed you

to hold me

while I fought to save myself.

And you let me cry

where you couldn’t hear it.