Pieces of Me

Normally I let myself out

Piece by piece

Afraid if I let them see all of me

They will leave

All of me is harder to love

Than pieces of me

At least that’s what I used to tell myself

This part is not loveable

No one could ever love that part

That part makes me a horrible human so that definitely can’t be loved

Who do I think I am?

Wanting to be loved, wanting to be seen.

Then slowly, and then in full force

People started appearing

And I dropped my masks

I let them in

I let them see all of me

The parts that have been hidden in the deepest depths of my soul

There is nothing they don’t know

And yet

They love me

All the stories I had written

Were lies I made up to protect myself

Yet I’ve come to realize

Instead of protecting myself

I was building walls that kept people out

Not only the people that could hurt me but the people who could love me too

Because in my head I thought I wasn’t loveable.

Because I didn’t love me.

It was a war within myself and made myself wrong and unloveable because of the stories I wrote.

What a joke.

I looked at people like they were liars if they expressed love to me.

How could I believe they loved me when I didn’t love me?

Then I pushed them away when they got close because that meant they could hurt me.

Yet I was hurting myself in the process.

“See I was right” I would say. “They didn’t care enough to fight for me.”

I was setting it up to prove that people didn’t and couldn’t love me.

While ignoring everything that showed they did.

Now I know

Without a doubt

The people who don’t love you for who you are

Were never your people anyway

I’ll never be something I’m not or try to be something I’m not ever again.

No one gets to tell me how to feel

I know it in my bones

I feel what is right

I am me.