Mine Palace Construction

There is a room in my mind I’ve lived in for years without ever meaning to. A room built out of old conversations, unfinished apologies, and the kind of memories that cling like damp fabric. I didn’t decorate it. I didn’t choose the furniture. I didn’t even choose to stay. But somehow, I kept returning to it—sitting in the same chair, touching the same wounds, replaying the same ghosts.

It’s strange how long you can survive in a place that hurts you.
Stranger still how normal it starts to feel.

I used to think healing meant fixing the room. Scrubbing the walls. Replacing the broken things. Making it livable. Making it mine. But some rooms aren’t meant to be repaired. Some rooms were never meant to hold you in the first place. They were built by someone else’s hands, someone else’s expectations, someone else’s version of you.

And today—finally—I felt the shift.
The quiet click of a doorknob turning.
The realization that I don’t have to stay here anymore.

It was a small, stubborn truth rising in my chest: I can leave. I can step out. I can walk into a different part of myself, one that isn’t shaped by fear or longing or the ache of wanting something that never wanted me back.

Limerence taught me how easy it is to build a shrine out of a person.
Healing taught me how necessary it is to burn it down.
Reality taught me how much it actually hurts to heal yourself.

I’m not walking out of this room because I’m suddenly strong. I’m walking out because I’m tired. Because I deserve air. Because I deserve a life that isn’t spent kneeling at the altar of someone else’s absence.

The door is open.
I’m stepping through it.
And I’m not taking anything with me.

Some rooms are meant to be left behind.
This one is finally empty.