Too Much Love, Yet Never Freedom

I was loved—perhaps too much.
But that love came wrapped in insecurity,
forever clipping my wings,
building golden cages and calling them home.
It held me close through control,
through wounds both visible and unseen,
through storms of emotional and physical torment,
all in the name of never letting me go.
Then, unexpectedly, another soul appeared.
A heart that seemed to whisper my name.
I do not know when admiration became attachment,
or when hope quietly transformed into love.
For a while, life felt beautiful.
There was comfort, warmth, and the illusion of safety.
I believed I had finally found a refuge,
a place where my weary heart could rest.
But some stories are written in fading ink.
Slowly, I realized I was never the destination—
only a passing distraction,
an entertainer in someone else's lonely hours.
When life unleashed its harshest battles,
when pain arrived uninvited and relentless,
the one who taught me to dream
simply turned away and left me alone to survive.
Love is foolish that way.
It blinds us to truths standing openly before our eyes.
Even after being abandoned,
a part of me kept waiting for footsteps that were never returning.
And when reality finally stood before me,
unmasked and merciless,
it shattered me into fragments
I never knew could exist within a single soul.
I was broken into countless pieces,
too exhausted to gather them,
too wounded to remember who I once was.
Strangely, the man who once caused me pain
began to seem kinder than the one
who taught me how to fly,
only to set fire to my wings mid-flight.
And here I stand again—
on the edge of another tomorrow,
searching for a reason to keep walking,
searching for a reason to believe.
Love is beautiful when it is genuine.
But in the hands of a pretender,
it becomes a slow poison—
one that convinces the wounded they are healing
while quietly breaking them all over again.
So, dear God,
if happiness still carries my name somewhere,
pause this endless ache for a while.
Let my heart rest.
Let my spirit breathe.
And if I must rise again,
give me the strength to choose myself this time—
before choosing love.

                                     Doreen Anthony