In the quiet dark of my deepest seas, where shadows pressed in and called themselves love,
I carried the grit of a toxic cycle— every lie, every guilt-twist, every "not enough."
They thought I would stay small, caught into their palm,
a people-pleaser dimming myself to keep their storms calm .
But pain has a strange alchemy
and my spirit a stranger strength.
What cut me became my catalyst.
What wounded me became my health.
Slowly, softly, secretly at first, I began to layer truth over hurt, boundaries over betrayal and healing my self worth.
I didn't break, I formed.
Under pressure they never understood,
I crafted myself into something luminous, something whole,
a gleam their darkness could never hold.
A pearl is born from irritation, from the grain that won't go away— and so their torment was just that, which formed me into the pearl I am today.