Smells like experience

I have to apologise… to myself.

I blamed the incomplete and often desperate grocery store bouquets I translated as fate and used it as a direction away from myself.

I did not want those wilted hothouse flowers any more than I cared about their laundry list of complaints about me. My loyalty is a bit gross and sticks like temu’s double-sided tape… it does not adhere to what you purchased it for but it will ruin your walls.

I stay way past the run away and hide point. I know I am being used and I assume what they are taking from me they need more than I do.

Even as I am walking into the river with rocks in my cardigan, I leave myself open to be pillaged. I have this reoccurring thought that I have no value unless I am bleeding out for someone. A child, a family member, a relationship I never wanted or a stranger that really wanted my television set.

Boundaries are for people that can afford to walk away.

I knew I did not like the habits of that person. Or that other person’s social circle. I felt largely uncomfortable when I was lied to and the lie was made out to be my delusions.

“Oh haha right I am a bit crazy yeah.”

Name one time my intuition has been wrong.

I continuously believe that no one can be as awful as they show up. Or that it is my perception of a situation. So I endure. I suffer.

I can wave my self-righteous finger around but you know what? I have no one to blame but me. My inability to trust what is right in front of me is what burns me each and every time.

Yet I know I do not own anyone an apology for surviving. But I love that I automatically give myself one— like a truce after years of civil war.

It is strange how loyalty can outlast love.

How we mistake endurance for goodness, and think bleeding on the floor means we have done something holy.

I will name my wounds without glamourising them. Nor will I romanticise that ache. I am apologising to myself not turning victimhood into alchemy.

No, my intuition was never wrong, it was overruled by hope, and hope has always been the loudest liar in the room.

I still believe in beauty (because what is life without it?) but I refuse to put myself on the front line to die for it.

I walk past the wilted bouquets and buy living plants instead.