It wasn’t you I couldn’t quit.

It was the version of me

who believed you were the cure.

Your apologies came like medicine—

small doses,

just enough to numb

what I didn’t want to name.

You weren’t warmth.

You were fever.

A slow-burning ache

I mistook for being held.

I told myself I stayed for love.

But I stayed for the quiet

that followed the storm—

for the look in your eyes

that said maybe

I mattered again.

That was the hit.

Not the love.

Just the calm

between the breaking.

And I chased it.

Even when it wrecked me.

But strength isn’t staying.

It’s walking out—

surviving the silence

that follows.

Because withdrawal

doesn’t feel like healing.

It feels like missing

the hands that pushed you under

just because they once

pulled you back.

But I’ve stopped chasing your ghost.

Stopped blaming myself

for needing something

you were never built to give.

And now,

when I feel the pull—

I let it pass.

It’s just the echo

of a man

who thought love

meant survival.

And he was wrong.

Read the Next Poem

The Quiet Came Back Slowly