Fragments of Cassandra

There is something deeply wrong with the way I love people.

Not wrong in the cruel sense.
Wrong in the way a candle is wrong
for continuing to burn
while everyone keeps using its flame
to survive their own darkness.

I have always opened the door too early.
Before names settled.
Before intentions revealed themselves.
Before my heart could ask,
“Are they safe?”

But I see pain in people
and suddenly my boundaries feel immoral.

So I let them in.
Every time.

The lonely ones.
The angry ones.
The shattered ones.
The ones who swear
they have never been understood before.

And God,
I understand them.

I understand them so deeply
that I start handing them pieces of myself
without realizing
I am slowly disappearing.

Take my energy.
Take my sleep.
Take my patience.
Take the softness I was saving for myself.

I can survive a little emptier.
I always do.

Until one day I look in the mirror
and realize there are fingerprints
all over my soul.

People have carved themselves into me
like desperate prayers into church walls.
And somehow I am always the one
left abandoned afterward.

Because people love me most
when I am saving them.

Not when I need saving too.

That is the part no one tells you.

Some people will crawl into your arms
pretending to be dying
only to drain the life from you
the moment they can stand on their own again.

And I let them.

Over
and over
and over.

Like some tragic animal
returning to the hand
that keeps breaking its ribs.

I have been lied to softly.
Manipulated gently.
Used by people
who looked me in the eyes
and called it love.

I have watched people memorize
the map of my heart
only so they could learn
exactly where to place the knife.

And the worst part is;
I still mourn them afterward.

Even the ones who destroyed me.

Especially them.

Because I always see the hurt child
inside the monster.
And that has been the death of me
more times than I can count.

People take and take and take from me
until there is almost nothing left.

Then they leave me on the side of the road
like a burned-out house
they no longer need shelter from.

And somehow
I am always the one apologizing
for leaving the ashes on the ground.

I tell myself this time will be different.
This time I will stop loving people
like they are drowning
while I am allowed to sink.

But then someone looks at me
with pain in their eyes,
and my stupid heart opens again
like it was never broken at all.

I wish I could explain
how exhausting it is
to survive your own destruction repeatedly.

To gather yourself from the floor
with shaking hands
while pieces of you are still missing
inside people who never deserved them.

I am tired.

Not the kind of tired sleep fixes.
The kind of tired
that settles into the bones
after becoming a home
for everyone except yourself.

I am tired of being the person
people heal beside
while I quietly decay in the background.

Tired of being loved only
for how much I can endure.

Tired of surviving things
that should have made me colder.

Because the terrifying thing is;
they didn’t.

After everything,
I still cannot make myself cruel.

I still answer the phone.
Still stay too long.
Still love too deeply.
Still hand people the match
knowing they may burn me alive with it.

Maybe that is my curse.

To remain soft
in a world that rewards sharp edges.

To keep resurrecting myself
from the wreckage
just to be wounded again.

But no matter how many times
this world leaves me in pieces,
I crawl back toward the light
with whatever is left of me.

Bruised.
Half-alive.
Barely breathing.

Still carrying love in my hands
like it has never betrayed me before.

Be’ahava,
Cassandra