The broken girl

She stands on the edge of a life that never felt like hers, toes curled over memories that cut like broken glass, laughing at a past that played her like a cruel joke— every promise a punchline, every “forever” just a pause. Love, they said, would come soft and steady, but all she’s known are hands that hold—then let go, voices that swear “always” in the dark then vanish with the morning like smoke. So she tells herself the truth no one else will say: no one will ever love her without conditions, no one will stay when the weight of her world starts pulling at their patience. She lives like a rat in a cage— pacing the same thoughts, the same fears, while the world outside blurs past at the speed of light, faces and futures she’ll never touch, never be near. Sleep is a battlefield she refuses to enter, because dreams don’t rest—they remember. They drag her back to the nights she can’t rewrite, to the moments that echo louder in silence than they ever did in sound. Trust is a language she forgot how to speak— not in others, not even in herself. Her reflection feels like a stranger with secrets, a girl she wouldn’t confide in if she could. And somehow, her pain becomes public property— picked apart, judged, misunderstood. Her burden, heavy and private, handled by others like it’s theirs to define. She’s so tired of breathing through broken hours, so tired of waking into the same endless night, where the sun feels like a lie told to other people and hope is just a word she can’t quite hold. She doesn’t want to die— not exactly. She just wants out of this nightmare, wants to wake up somewhere softer, somewhere quiet, somewhere the past doesn’t follow her like a shadow that refuses to loosen its grip. So she stands on that edge, not falling, not flying— just… suspended, between giving up and wishing, just once, that something—someone— might prove her wrong.