Loneliness, My Nemesis

It wasn’t love. It was fear. And I’m done shrinking to fit inside someone else’s life.

Loneliness used to terrify me.
Not just the quiet,
the emptiness.
The echo where someone else’s voice should be.
The space where I measured my worth
by how close someone stood next to me.

I called it love.
It was dependency.
I called it loyalty.
It was fear with a leash on it.

For years, I clung.
To people, to approval, to connection so fragile
it cracked every time I breathed too hard.
I needed someone to tell me I mattered
because I was too scared to hear my own voice.

But then the silence came.
A year of it.
And no one showed up to save me.

So I did.

I sat in that loneliness.
Let it scrape me down to the core.
Let it show me the lies,
the stories I told myself to justify the chains.

And then something broke.
Not me.
The illusion.

Now I’m not looking to be completed.
I’m not shrinking to fit inside someone else’s comfort.
I’m not addicted to the echo of validation anymore.

I’m not healed.
But I’m free.
And that’s the first honest thing I’ve felt in a long, long time.