I wanted you to make me feel safe when I didn’t yet know how to create safety inside myself. I wanted your love to answer questions it could never answer: Am I enough? Am I desirable? Will you choose me? Will you stay? And somewhere along the way, I stopped asking whether I was choosing myself. The world keeps moving with an almost offensive normality. People go swimming. Trains arrive. cats demand food. Friends send messages. Plants grow new leaves. Summer comes back. I laugh sometimes. And every time I laugh, I discover that my life continued without asking your permission.

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