If I am being brutally honest, I would have stayed a stranger to half the people I gave pieces of my soul to. Some of them did not deserve my presence, let alone my loyalty. I opened my world to people who could not even handle my silence. I handed out love like medicine to the very ones who made me sick.
Some connections were not fate, they were lessons with teeth. I mistook manipulation for meaning, pity for passion, and red flags for depth. I tried to love broken souls who only wanted company in their chaos. I poured light into people who hated themselves too much to hold it, they drained me dry, called it love, then labeled me “too much” when I started expecting the same energy back.
Now?
I have evolved into the storm they once thought they could drown me in. I no longer explain my boundaries. I enforce them. My empathy is earned, not assumed. I do not fix, I do not chase, and I sure as hell do not beg to be understood. I let people lose access to me, and I do not send reminders.
Because I finally realised, not everyone who touches your soul deserves to stay. Some people were meant to pass through, not unpack. I was sacred ground they mistook for a playground.
So yeah, if I had known then what I know now, I would have chosen to stay a stranger. I would have smiled, nodded, and walked right past half the chaos I once tried to call love. Peace is expensive, and I refuse to spend it on cheap souls again.
“You do not get to say you knew me, you just got a free trial of what forever felt like.”
