Post #955860

There are stairs inside me that don’t lead anywhere good. They go up into locked rooms. They go down into basements that smell like mould and old apologies. Every step is narrow. Every step is sharp. I learned early how to climb without crying. How to keep quiet when the wood bit back. Some nights I swear I can still hear myself falling— that hollow thud of bone on timber, the way shame echoes longer than pain. I kept climbing anyway. Not because I’m brave. Because there was nowhere else to go. Soil is not soft. It is not romantic. It is a mouth. It opens. It takes. It keeps. I have knelt in it long enough to mistake it for prayer. Pressed parts of myself down into the dark— the need, the anger, the version of me that wanted too much. Covered her with both hands. Said, this is safer. Said, rot quietly. But soil doesn’t let things stay dead. It swells with what you hide. Feeds on it. Pushes it back up, warped and wrong. Every time I tried to disappear, something grew teeth. And the thing I don’t regret? It isn’t pretty. I don’t regret loving in ways that gutted me. I don’t regret staying until I was unrecognisable. I don’t regret clawing my way up those stairs even when I hoped I’d slip. The truth? I don’t regret surviving. Even when survival was ugly. Even when it made me hard. Even when I became the kind of person people don’t swipe right on. I chose the bruise. I chose the dirt. I chose to keep breathing when it would’ve been easier not to. The stairs still splinter. The soil still waits. But I am the thing that came back wrong and came back anyway. And I don’t regret that.