The Lesson You Taught Me

You told me I was too much.

So I learned to shrink.

Folded myself down

like a letter never sent.

Quieted the parts of me

that made you uncomfortable.

You hit me.

Not always with fists.

Sometimes with silence.

Sometimes with shame.

And I learned how to take it

like a lesson

I never asked to learn.

You said I was lucky

you didn’t leave.

That I made you do it.

That if I’d just stop talking,

just be better,

it wouldn’t happen.

I tried to be better.

Quieter.

Smaller.

I twisted myself

into shapes that hurt to hold.

But it was never enough

for you.

You hurt me

because you could.

Because I loved you

and you knew

I didn’t know

what love was supposed to feel like.

You made cruelty sound like concern.

Taught me to confuse fear with respect.

You called me dramatic,

overreacting,

ungrateful,

every time I flinched

when you raised your voice

or your hand.

You loved me

like I was a mirror,

only when I reflected

what you wanted to see.

I wanted your approval

like air.

I breathed around your moods,

held my tongue in the hollows

of your silence.

You made me feel

like needing anything

was selfish.

Like softness

was weakness.

Like I should be grateful

to be tolerated.

I spent years

trying to earn your affection

with obedience.

But you never softened.

Not for me.

And still—

some part of me

kept hoping you’d wake up

one day

and realize

you were wrong.

That I was worthy.

That I was never too much.

That I was never the problem.

But I know better now.

You taught me how to disappear

inside myself.

And I’m still unlearning

how to come back.

I don’t miss you.

But some nights,

I miss the version of me

who still believed

you might change.

I wish I could go back

and pull that girl

out of your storm.

Tell her she’s not too much.

She’s not too broken.

Love

should never make you

afraid to come home.

You mocked the way I cried.

Taught me to apologize

for needing comfort.

Taught me to laugh at myself

before you could.

But I’m not laughing now.

I am naming.

I am remembering.

I am refusing

to make you kinder in memory

than you ever were in life.

You don’t get to be

a misunderstood woman.

You were cruel.

And I was a child.

Still—

I grew up.

Not because of you.

In spite of you.

You don’t get to live

in my mirror anymore.

You don’t get to haunt

my motherhood

or my joy

or the way I say, “I’m proud of you.”

to my own children.

I broke the cycle.

I didn’t become you.

That is my victory.

You were the lesson.

I am the healing.

And I say it now,

out loud:

You don’t get to keep me.