Day 1,300 of Being Kinder to Myself

1,300 days is a long time.
Long enough to heal,
long enough to grieve.
Long enough for silence
to disguise itself as peace.

But I still hear it.
A whisper hiding in my sigh,
an old thirst that never dies.
It’s perfectly hidden;
as a fight with a friend,
as a stormy day,
as a dull ache never fading away.
It never comes shouting.
It slides in with ease.
Like a room I used to live in,
air nostalgic with retreat.

Sometimes I miss it.
Not the pain nor the cost,
but the way that it hugged me,
when I was all alone and lost.
How it blurred the sharp edges,
but just barely enough,
for it to feel soft instead of rough.

But I don’t go back.
At least not today.
Today, I say pass;
it’s my brain I obey.
I choose my own loss,
despite missing the high,
of getting what I was,
before saying goodbye.

This is not forgetting.
This is a fight.
This is me walking
with strength through the night.
This is not freedom.
This is choosing thereof.
And maybe that, too,
is a form of self-love.