It Took Five years
It took five years to kill me.
Honestly, if I were asked, I would have said I’d survive much longer.
But I never chose what it would cost me.
I truly thought I could do it. I didn’t think I had everything it would take, but I believed what I had was enough.
So I went to war.
It took five years.
Five years wrestling, not with a legion, not with unseen forces, but with her.
Just her.
At first, I thought it was them.
Ah, the people.
I trusted them. I loved them. I would have given myself to them without hesitation.
I remember showing up again and again, with open hands, only to find them always empty when I left.
But I learned quickly that love is not always enough -sometimes, it simply isn’t wanted.
After repeated acts of sincerity were met with indifference, something in me hardened. I wanted to fight back. To prove I, too, could be callous. Cold. Unreachable.
I tried.
But I couldn’t.
For the first time, I hated the softness within me. I wanted to punish it for surviving. For remaining open. For refusing to become like them.
Why couldn’t I just stop caring?
Why did I feel everything so deeply when they felt nothing at all?
So instead, I turned away from it.
The war continued — not against the people anymore, but against her.
Then, slowly, I began to see the true enemy.
She stood before me, clad in armor forged from every flaw I’d ever feared. Her weapons were made for my weakest points. I tried to run, but my legs would not obey. Blow after blow, strike after strike, we fought -until she finally fell.
With my last breath, I stood there, believing I had won.
But victory never came.
Instead, I collapsed — consumed by a pain that was all too familiar. Every wound, every bruise, every fracture I had felt, I now carried fully — not as a distant observer, but as the bearer.
My chest ached, not from battle, but from years of holding my breath.
Waiting to be seen.
Waiting to be enough.
And in that moment, I understood.
She was me.
I had been fighting myself all along.
Five years of a self-imposed war - born from rejection, sustained by fear, fueled by the desperate need to be enough.
This is where the past meets the present. Not in accusation, but in recognition. Not in shame, but in honesty.
Five years of war taught me this: the people were never the enemy.
The softness was never the weakness.
The real battle was learning not to abandon myself every time someone else did.
And this time, instead of raising my fists, I choose to raise my eyes.
Il nemico più grande è dentro di te.
~ The greatest enemy is within you.