the urge to never become like my parents Sometimes I love my parents not for their agreement, but for listening. For the freedom they gave me to study, to breathe, to think my own thoughts. But sometimes I hate them too not for disagreement, but for the price of proof, the endless performance, the lies I've had to live. They made me kill my emotions before they could kill them first. Their words dripped like poison into the spaces around me, and I learned to swallow the bitter: the constant negativity, the shadows they cast, the slow erasure of myself. I had to die to survive. Then he came into my life And I became myself again. Not a version. Not a performance. Myself. I learned what the positive feels like, what genuine freedom tastes like, what it means to feel emotions without the weight of shame. I started being happy. I started being real. I started living instead of disappearing. And now I know Love isn't just agreement. It's space. It's safe. It's letting someone be. It's what my parents couldn't give me. It's what he showed me I deserved all along.