A Performance of Hurt

 Deep within me lingers a hesitation—an unease with the way I am perceived, the way I am loved. Sometimes, carrying my own name feels like an endurance test, a measure of how long I can tolerate the person I have become.

I crave to be seen, yet recoil from the weight of eyes upon me. The expectation of others feels unsafe, like a stage I never meant to step onto, and when the light shines on me, it only highlights my urge to shrink, to disappear, to deny myself the relief of simply existing.

A part of me always believes I am unworthy of being at ease.

Everything that once moved me has settled into wounds, cherished now like old belongings in a body too weary to let them go. Perhaps that is why I am the problem—I seek only the kind of love that holds me in the familiar way that pain does, and when tenderness arrives, I meet it with suspicion, mistaking it for failure.

Have I become nothing more than a performance of hurt? Something the world can resonate with but never save? Why do I insist on breaking—again and again—like it is the only thing I am whole for?

Like it is the only thing I am fit for.