"Too this, too that, too much"

There are gaps in my memories, blackened spaces where the pictures fade — shadows cloaking what I cannot bear to see.

But I feel it, lingering, a heavy knowing that something sharp once happened, cutting too deep to stay visible.

She called me a burden, a mistake misplaced by fate, insisting the hospital must have erred.

Her daughter could never be someone like me ; a child too quiet, too vigorous, too wrong in her eyes.

Her hands stung like wasps over the smallest things, the most mundane mistakes, but her words hit harder.

Passing mirrors became rituals of disdain, her reflection twisting mine before I could know myself.

“Too this, too that, too much,” she would say, planting seeds of self-doubt that grew into a tangled forest I still fight to escape.

I’ve spent years repairing the wreckage, patching the cracks she left in my sense of self, learning how to eat without guilt, to see my body as a home, not an enemy.

But some scars remain stubborn, etched into the fabric of who I am, a map of pain I never asked for.

And I’m so tired, so tired of spending my one precious life rewiring what she short-circuited, rebuilding what she shattered, untangling what she bound too tightly.

I didn’t break myself, but I’m left with the pieces.

Still, I’m here, worn but not finished, carving out a life that is mine — a life she doesn’t own, a mirror she cannot reach.

— Lux