how could i love me without loving you? 

i loved you
in ways i never dared to love myself—
with tenderness i didn’t think i deserved,
with patience i never offered my own bones,
with grace i withheld from my own reflection.

you told me,
“love yourself first—
as fiercely,
as wholly,
as endlessly as you love me.
because if i ever vanish,
i don’t want you to disappear with me.”

but how could i?
when loving you
was the first time i ever learned what love looked like.
when your laughter became a lullaby
that quieted the storms i carried inside.
when your presence painted warmth on walls
that had only known cold.

you said i needed to be whole without you.
but i was never whole to begin with—
i was scattered pages,
and you were the hands that tried to read me gently,
even when the ink was smudged.

i tried,
god, i tried—
to pour that same softness into my own soul,
to hold myself the way you held me,
to kiss my own wounds
like you kissed my silence.

but every act of self-love
still tasted like your name.
every time i looked inward,
i saw you reflected back.

you were my mirror,
and maybe that’s why i never saw myself clearly.
maybe that’s why when you left,
i shattered.

and now i sit with pieces,
trying to find a way to love
the jagged edges you once softened.
trying to love the echo
of someone who once learned love
by loving you.

tell me,
how do i unlearn the kind of love
that stitched me together
but never taught me
how to stay whole on my own?

tell me,
how do i stop longing for the hands
that taught me how to hold myself?

tell me,
how do i stop searching for you
every time i try to find me?

because the truth is—
loving you
was the closest i ever got
to loving myself.

and maybe that’s what hurts the most.
maybe that’s what i’m still grieving.
not just you.
but the version of me
that only ever bloomed
in your light.