I see now the poison I willingly let into my life.

At first, it felt like a blessing. It filled me with energy, with joy, with the kind of warmth that makes you believe you've finally found something worth holding on to. I never imagined that something capable of making me feel so alive could, in time, leave me feeling so hollow. But poison has a strange way of disguising itself. It doesn't always arrive with bitterness. Sometimes, it comes wrapped in everything you've ever wanted. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, something begins to change. You notice it in the things you tolerate, in the words that linger long after they've been spoken, in the quiet moments when you realize you're no longer quite yourself. You begin giving more than you have, tending to something that seems to require all of you, while the parts of you that once felt whole begin to wither. You tell yourself it's temporary. You tell yourself that if you give a little more, if you understand a little better, if you hold on a little longer, perhaps the sweetness will return. I cannot say I emerged from this untouched, or that every wound I carry was inflicted by another. I have my own darkness, my own sharp edges. I have spoken from places of hurt and, at times, allowed that hurt to become something harmful. Pain may explain the things we do, but it does not absolve us of them. Still, there comes a moment when you must stop confusing endurance with devotion. When you must look at what remains of you and wonder how something you once cherished came to cost you so much. Perhaps the most difficult truth is that I saw things I did not want to see. I felt things I could not explain away. Yet I continued to believe in what I hoped it could be, rather than what it was becoming. A fool can be remarkably loyal to his own illusions. And now, I find myself looking back with a strange mixture of grief, anger, and disbelief. Not simply at what was lost, but at how quietly it happened. How little I noticed myself disappearing. How much I mistook for love simply because I wanted it to be. I don't know whether the poison was ever what I believed it to be. I only know what it has left behind. Perhaps that is where the real reckoning begins, not in naming what wounded me, not in pretending I was blameless, but in finally recognizing what I can no longer afford to lose.

Myself.