Nothing Feels Like Mine

Nothing feels like mine anymore.

Not my voice.
Not my choices.
Not even the woman I’m becoming.

And they ask—
“How did you let that happen?”

Like it was mine to stop.
I didn’t lose myself all at once.

I was taken—in pieces.

Through the softness disappeared.
The part of me that trusted.
The part that believed the world could feel safe.

Through the certainty.
That knowing—of who I was and what I deserved.

And what replaced it—wasn’t clarity.
It was noise.
Because trauma doesn’t just hurt you—it rearranges you.

The way you think.
The way you see yourself.
The way you move.

And before I could even understand what was happening—they started asking:

“What did you do?”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Why did you choose to stay?”
“Are you sure?”

Questions that sound like concern but land
like blame.

And then came the abuse.
Not all at once.
But slowly.
Strategically.
A steady unmaking.

It taught me to question my own memory.
To doubt my instincts.
To second-guess myself.

What felt solid broke.
What felt certain shifted.
And my body knew.

The flinch.
The silence.
The fear that didn’t need a reason.

But when I couldn’t show it—they asked louder:

“What did you do?”
“Why didn’t you just leave?”
“If it was that bad, why stay?”
“Why didn’t you tell someone sooner?”

So, I learned.
To apologize for things I didn’t do.
To shrink in spaces I once filled.
To stay silent—while something in me was screaming.

My body was there but I was disappearing.

Piece by piece—I became someone built
for survival not truth.

And every time I reached for myself—every time I tried to come back—they asked even louder:

“What did you do?”
“You seem unstable.”
“Maybe you’re overreacting.”
“You’re not telling the whole story.”
“There’s two sides.”

And just like that—I became the explanation.

The broken one.
The unstable one.
The one to blame.

Because it’s easier—to question me than to face
what was done to me.

They saw the collapse—but not the taking.
They judged the breaking—without ever seeing
what broke me.

So, no—nothing feels like mine.

Not because I failed—but because blame was handed to me like it belonged there.

It didn’t.

Because even now—
beneath the labels,
beneath the noise,
beneath the story they told about me—there is something still here.

Something they couldn’t rewrite.
A quiet, steady, undeniable truth—

This was never my fault.
Not then.
Not now.

So, when they ask—

“What did you do?”

I answer—I survived what you refused to see.