Therapy Bits

I have lived in rooms
where silence was sharpened into weapons,
where love was a bargain
and my body the cost.

I walked away carrying
the weight of someone else’s storms,
stitched to my skin like bruises,
stitched so tight I forgot they weren’t mine.

But now,
when fingers reach for the old levers,
when they test the seams
and try to press every button I own—
I feel the jolt,
I feel the echo,
but I do not break.

I draw a line.
A boundary.
A wall made not of fear,
but of self-respect.

Call it defiance,
call it survival,
call it the truth finally learning to speak:

I am not here
to be remade in someone else’s hunger.
I am not here
to carry their fire and burn.

I am here
to choose myself,
to guard my edges,
to bloom in the space
my “no” makes sacred.

RDP Wednesday: BUTTON