Run and Survive

The world didn’t harden me overnight. It happened slowly.

By teaching me that love meant sacrifice,

that my worth depended on how much I could endure quietly.

So I learned to carry people

before I even learned how to carry myself.

Now I crave freedom like air,

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because I spent too long shrinking around everyone else’s needs.

I became mature too early,

softness replaced with survival,

rest replaced with responsibility.

And maybe that was the cruelest part:

not that I was destroyed completely,

but that I slowly started believing

my own needs should always come last.