The Parts of Me That Stayed

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 There are things that happened to me that never leave the room.

Even when I’m smiling. Even when I’m loved.

They sit quietly in my chest like furniture no one remembers moving in.


I lost people I thought would always be there.

I lost a child I never got to hold long enough.

I lost safety before I understood what it was.

I lost a home, a body that felt like mine, and the illusion that love always protects.


And still—somehow—I stayed.


Not bravely. Not gracefully.

I stayed shaking, dissociating, grieving, surviving on instinct and habit.

I stayed because leaving would have meant disappearing entirely.


People like stories about healing. They like the part where pain becomes purpose.

But this isn’t that kind of story.


This is about the quiet decision to remain.

To keep breathing in a body that remembers everything.

To keep loving when abandonment taught me to expect the opposite.


I am not whole.

I am not fixed.

I am not “over it.”


But I am here.


And that has to count for something.


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