I did not write this...A 16 year old girl wrote it.

I carried your name like a whispered prayer,

Folded in hope, handled with care.

Ten years of silence, heavy and long,

Ten years of waiting for you to be strong.

I prayed with a child’s unbroken faith,

Believed love could pull you out of that place.

I begged for change, for truth, for proof,

But answers came quiet, and not how I hoped.

You say you love me, but not to my face,

You send it through others, invading my space. 

Through borrowed voices, through words I didn’t seek,

Crossing the boundaries that keep me at peace.

I wished you loved me like you love alcohol,

With devotion, with choosing, with nothing held small.

The way you return, no matter the cost,

Even knowing what you’re willing to lose, what you’ve lost.

I told myself stories so I could survive,

That you’d changed, that you cared, that you’d finally try.

That maybe this time you’d be different somehow,

That I could have my mom back, not who you are now.

The mom I remember, soft and kind,

From when I was little and still blind.

Before I understood what the truth really was,

Before I knew alcohol always came first because…

I didn’t know then what it stole from you,

Or what it would take from me too.

I didn’t understand the distance, the pain,

I just wondered why love never stayed the same.

I think of you when the air feels stale,

When a whiff of cigarette smoke makes my chest go pale.

It hits me sudden, sharp and strong,

A memory I didn’t ask to carry along.

You’ll never know what you put me through,

How the damage followed me as I grew.

You don’t see the weight I carry each day,

Or how it shapes the choices I make, what I say.

You don’t see the trust I struggle to give,

The fear that whispers in how I live.

The way your absence still takes its toll,

Quietly carving pieces of my soul.

This pain didn’t stay in the past somewhere,

It walks beside me, it lives right here.

In my thoughts, my faith, my need to be strong,

In learning what love should have been all along.

Love shouldn’t travel through someone else’s mouth,

It shouldn't leave scars or steal a child’s trust.

It shouldn’t make someone question their worth,

Or wonder what mattered more since their birth.

I don’t hate you, this pain isn’t that,

I mourn the mother I never quite had.

I grieve the girl who waited in hope,

Believing someday you’d finally cope.

I haven’t healed yet, and I might never do so,

Some pain doesn’t leave, it just softens and slows.

I carry it quietly, learning to breathe,

Learning what parts of myself I can keep.

I wish you would change, I wish prayers were enough,

I wish love could make broken people choose us.

But faith taught me strength I didn’t expect,

Sometimes the answer is distance and self respect.

So I step away, not bitter or cold,

But done setting fires to feel you hold.

I release the weight I was never meant to bear,

Of saving a soul who won’t meet me halfway there.

I’ll keep growing steady, choosing what’s right,

Protecting my peace, choosing my light.

I loved you the best I knew how to be,

Now I love myself enough to finally be free.

This is for me, the girl who survived,

Who learned to stay soft and still stay alive.

I’m healing in pieces, uneven and slow,

Becoming someone I’m still getting to know.

I don’t need closure shaped like and apology,

Or love that arrives through someone else’s honesty.

I am allowed to keep choosing my peace,

Even if the ache doesn’t fully release.

I will keep growing, honest and true,

Holding my heart the way I once held you.

And even if healing takes all of my life,

I am more than the damage, the loss, or the fight.