Thank you
for thinking I needed to listen,
thank you for believing
I am too generous to remember myself.
But I don’t feel like an afterthought
in my life—not anymore.

I’ve stopped waiting to be seen.
I see myself now—
in mirrors,
in puddles,
in the snow stretched on a lawn
where no one else is scooped but me,
and the sky that keeps showing up,
soft and unafraid, filled with purple.

There were days
I confused invisibility with peace,
but now—I sit in silence,
and it feels like breathing,
not vanishing.

There were years
I tried to earn love,
like a merit badge for good behavior—
with quiet hands
and a heart willing to split open
just to make someone feel whole.

But now—
I know it doesn’t mean being full of others.
It means being full of life—
even when I’m tired,
even when I’m messy.

I don’t feel like a supporting role anymore.
I am not waiting for someone to write me in.
I am not the pause between someone else’s sentences.
I am the storyteller,
I am the ink,
I am the paper.

And if no one claps at the end—
that’s okay. I was never performing.
I was just being a friend to myself,
with the best seats in the house,
and that is more than enough.

So thank you
for your tenderness, and rage at times.
I hold it in my palms like a gift.
But please know—this life is mine,
and I do not feel like an afterthought in it.
I feel like the beginning
of taking care of myself
when I choose you as a friend—
over and over again.