bug

i think about the girl i used to be a lot. lost. addicted. settling for scraps because i genuinely believed that was all i deserved. i don’t recognize her anymore, but i carry her with me. now i’m building something that keeps me alive. something i’m proud of. something that’s mine. i don’t sell myself short anymore. i don’t chase crumbs. i don’t beg for love, attention, or validation. i get what i’m worth. my feet alone made me 30 bands. imagine what happened when i finally stopped undervaluing myself. bdsm didn’t just become my work. it became one of the ways i found myself again. i stopped forcing myself into submission and discounting myself because i thought that was the role i was supposed to play. i realized so much of that version of me was tangled up in trauma. regression was the coping mechanism. submission became the language i survived in. i was doing what i thought would keep me safe, what i thought people wanted from me, what i thought i had to be. then i remembered i could choose. i found strength in my dominance. not because it’s about controlling other people, but because it taught me to stop abandoning myself. it taught me boundaries. self respect. the ability to ask for more instead of apologizing for existing. i’m still healing. i’m still recovering. i’m still wrestling with alcohol some days. but i’m not going backwards. i’m not touching the drugs again. i’m not returning to the people, habits, and places that only knew how to love the smallest version of me. growth isn’t always soft. sometimes it’s brutal. and it really is painful. sometimes becoming whole feels like splitting open. i’m growing into the strongest tree with roots that can’t be ripped from the ground. i’m blooming into a wild rose bush, beautiful enough to stop and admire, but with thorns sharp enough that no one gets to handle me carelessly ever again. i am who i am. nobody is like me or can be. nobody is like you or can be you.