#selfsabotage

Gov. Kathy Hochul finds another way to hurt economic development in the state. Source link

She shows up before the thing even starts.

Before the conversation, before the attempt, before you've even given yourself a real chance — she's already there. Whispering that it won't work. That you'll pour yourself out again and get nothing back. That it's safer not to try.

I know her well.

She's the part of me that learned, early, that giving everything wasn't a guarantee of receiving anything. So she started pulling back before the disappointment could arrive. Started sabotaging things before they could fail on their own.

Because if I destroy it first, at least I'm in control of how it ends.

That's what self-sabotage really is, underneath all of it. It's not laziness. It's not weakness. It's a protection strategy that stopped serving you a long time ago.

I've held myself back in rooms I deserved to be in. I've talked myself out of things before anyone else got the chance to say no. I've picked fights when things were going well because some part of me was just waiting for it to fall apart anyway.

And I've had to ask myself the question that changed everything:

What would I do if I actually believed I deserved for it to work out?

I'm still answering that question. But I've stopped letting fear make the final call.

She's afraid. She doesn't get to be in charge anymore.

To the piece of me

I’ve never forgiven,

I know that you know

the depths that I’ve sunk to—

we don’t have

that kind of currency

left

to keep risking it

like we do.

How many times

do I have to drag us

back from the edge—

half-alive,

hands still shaking,

heart split open

and handed back to me—

before you stop

calling it a chance

and recognize it

for what it is.

I wish I could cut you out.

Not because you’re weak,

but because you don’t know

when to stop reaching

for things

that have already proven

they will take

more than they give.

I don’t get it,

because I know

you don’t forget—

what it feels like

to be trapped,

how long it takes

to claw your way back

into something

that even resembles

whole—

how every inch forward

costs something,

how nothing comes back

the same shape

it left in.

I know you remember

the air,

how it never quite fills

your lungs right again,

how that breath was bought,

not given,

paid for in ways

we don’t get to forget,

and I made sure

when we got out

it couldn’t be taken again.

and still

you reach back.

You’re the danger to this system.

Not out there.

You.

The part that opens the door

after I’ve barred it,

that calls it love

when it starts to look familiar,

that mistakes quiet

for safe,

that hands me back

a breaking heart

and expects me

to make it hold.

I’m the one

who has to live

with what comes after—

the rebuilding,

the stitching,

the slow return

to something that works—

while you’re already

looking over your shoulder

for a reason

to go back.

So no—

I can’t cut you out.

I can name you,

I can hate you,

I can trace every ruin

back to your hands—

but they’re mine.

Same pulse.

Same breath.

Same body

we inhabit.

So I don’t get

a clean break.

I get this—

you reaching,

me rebuilding,

over and over,

until one of us

finally learns

or we run out

of anything left