I have spent thirty-one years with the same witness in my ears, through every room I’ve called my own, I’ve never once arrived alone. Some had night-lights, some had locks, some held hospital bands in boxes. Some held someone breathing near, some got quiet enough to hear my own pulse knocking through my chest, like even silence needed a guest. But I was there. That is the strangest truth I know: wherever I arrive, I also go. Every city, every bed, every place I’ve fled inside my head, every door I’ve hurried through— there I was, arriving too. God, I have tried to leave me behind. Changed the room. Changed my mind. Changed the people. Changed the name I gave the hurt to dull the blame. Called grief growth. Called fear a guide. Called being left “I chose my side.” Called abandonment being free because the truth asked more of me. I have told my life out loud and made the ugly parts less proud. Moved the worst behind my teeth. Trimmed the truth to find relief. Made some people kinder there because the truth was hard to bear. Made myself the villain instead because blame is quieter in my head. I know exactly where I bend. I know which stories I amend. I know which apologies I took because loneliness was the sharper hook. I know every time I said, “I’m fine,” while begging someone, “Still be mine.” And still— there is no version of leaving where I don’t come too. No disappearing act I can actually follow through. I can end the love. I can leave the house. I can swallow every word in my mouth. I can change my name, repaint every wall, but I am the one who survives it all. For years I thought that healing meant evicting every former tenant. The frightened one. The angry one. The one convinced that love would run. The needy one who asked for proof. The one who braced beneath each roof. I kept becoming someone new by making old selves unwelcome too. What a terrible way to make a home— survive the world, then live alone. Imagine making it through the flame then finding yourself assigned the blame. So I am trying something else. Not self-love. That word feels polished on the shelf, too clean for what I mean to do, too easy for what I’ve lived through. I mean something smaller. Something true. I am learning to be good company to the person who comes home with me. To sit beside myself at night without demanding I be all right. To let an old memory take its chair without asking why it’s still in there. To stop asking frightened parts of me when they plan to finally leave. To say, you can stay, and mean it too— not until I find a better you. Because I spent my life believing love was measured by who wasn’t leaving, and somehow missed through every door the one who stayed through all of yours. Me. I was there for every first, every blessing, every worst. Every hand I should not trust. Every hand that handled me with love. I know which dreams died without sound, too quietly to gather people round. I know the weight of every skin I had to lose to live within. And someday I may be the last who holds the language of my past. The child. The fool. The one who knew. The one who broke and still came through. Whole countries of myself will end when I am gone, my oldest friend. So I want to hold the record right— not only every losing fight. Not evidence for prosecution. Not every flaw demanding restitution. But testimony, plain and true, from the only witness who came through. I was there. I know how hard it had to be. I know how beautiful it could be. Same witness. Same skin. Same person I kept trying not to live within. There is no version of leaving where I don’t come too. So I am done building exits from the person I came through. One day I’ll be the last to know every version I outgrew long ago. And I don’t need perfection looking back at me. I just want to recognize who I learned to be: the one who stayed through every history, until I finally became good company.
