Part VI · Settled
Detox
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.