Am I choosing pain?

Am I choosing pain... or has it simply become the only thing that stays?

Maybe I hold on to it because it helps me write. Because it gives me something to bleed into. Because sadness, unlike joy, doesn’t ask to be protected—it just exists. Heavy and familiar. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’ve made pain feel like home.

Or maybe...

if I ever let go of the ache, there would be nothing left to call mine.

No grief to name. No wound to trace. No shadow to stand in.

Happiness could be mine too—I know that.

But happiness is delicate. Fleeting. It comes with its own kind of fear.

Fear of loss. Fear of change.

Fear of waking up and realizing it’s gone again.

And I don't think I can survive another goodbye.

So I sit here with the ache. With the words it gives me.

With the quiet that follows after everyone’s moved on.

Oh, what I’ve become.

Oh, what I’ve turned myself into—

a writer with nothing left to hold

but the pain that once made her feel real.