You Took It - I Live With It

You don’t think about me.

I know that.

You wake up and get on with your life like nothing happened.
Like you didn’t end something the day you put your hands on me.

But you did.

The life I had the one I was still figuring out, still building, still becoming
you ended it before I even got the chance to see what it could be.

There is a version of me that existed before you.

They’re gone.

Not changed.
Not stronger.
Gone.

You didn’t just hurt me.
You cut my life in half.

And what’s left of me had to learn how to exist again from nothing.

I had to become something different.
Not out of growth.
Not out of choice.
Out of survival.

You don’t live with that.

I do.

I wake up in a body that remembers what I wish I could forget.
I live in a body that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.

I look in mirrors
and don’t recognise who I am.

Every movement is a reminder.
Every limit is something you left behind.

This isn’t a story I tell.
It’s a condition I live with.

You get to move on like it was a moment.

For me, it never stopped.

It’s in how I move.
It’s in how I think.
It’s in every plan I had to bury
because of what you did.

You get distance.

I get permanence.

You get a life that kept going.
Mine had to be rebuilt around the damage you caused.

Do you ever think about that?
Or is it easier not to?

Because I don’t get that option.

I don’t get to forget.
I don’t get to look away.
I don’t get to be untouched.

I carry it all.

Not because I’m strong.
Because you made sure I had no other choice.

You took something from me I can never get back.

And I’m the one who has to live the rest of my life
as someone I never chose to become.

You don’t carry this.

I do.

Every step.
Every day.
For the rest of my life.