Unconditional Love

How can I tell my kids that I
taught myself to shrink
In the name of keeping peace?
I was always "fine" to everyone outside
The truth is, I was drowning in my thoughts
My thoughts that said this is not fine...
Love should not feel like war.
I swallowed myself piece by piece
until I didn't recognize the woman
Looking back at me.
I thought I was protecting them
Now I see
I was teaching them a version of love
That should never exist.
I mastered the art of second-guessing myself,
rewriting my feelings to match his tales.
I smiled in family photos with a heart
wrapped in apology,
wondering if I'd ever be enough
for someone who needed me to be smaller.
I ask myself, Why did I stay
Somewhere, I didn’t feel safe?
I stayed because I thought leaving
meant failure,
But I was already failing myself.
I called it staying for the kids,
I called it strength
I called it anything but fear

I apologized for everything
even when I did nothing wrong.
I breathe in blame like it was air
called it love because that is
all I have ever known.
He never raised a hand
but he twisted the truth
Everyone believed it
so I started believing it too.
I stayed through the quiet control,
the withhold, and the weight of
never being enough.
They learned to walk on eggshells too,
tiptoeing around his moods,
reading the air like a weather forecast,
Never sure if he was brewing up a storm.
When he told them he wasn’t going to say
“I love you” back,
I told them it wasn’t their fault
I knew then
I should have left
I just didn’t love myself yet.
I didn’t know how to protect them
from that kind of heartbreak.
I swallowed the guilt for letting
them grow up in a home where
love was conditional.
He was charming,
so, so charming,
always a great dad
affection and smiles
always in public.
He seemed so warm,
they didn’t see the cold
that waited for us behind
closed doors.
Still, I couldn’t leave.
He left me,
and I sit with the blame of putting them through it
I sit with our children in the quiet.
I see them cry, and I hold their pain
and mine.
I was left with all the wreckage.
But we are surviving.
I am done teaching them to disappear
They will not learn shrinking from me.