You never leave.
You wait where the light fades, stretching across the floor as if you’ve always belonged there.
You remember everything.
Not the birthdays or the moments that made me smile. You remember every mistake I’ve ever made. Every word I wish I could take back. Every opportunity I let slip away. Every person I disappointed. You collect them like treasure.
“Remember?”
Of course I remember.
You make sure I do.
You replay every memory until it loses its place in time. Yesterday feels like years ago, and years ago feels like yesterday. They blur together until I can’t escape them. I try to move forward, but you pull me back, reminding me that people don’t change, that mistakes stay forever.
Sometimes I don’t know whose voice I’m listening to anymore.
I tell myself I’ll be okay, but before the thought can settle, you’re already there.
“This is all you’ll ever be.”
At first, I argued with you. I tried to drown you out with louder thoughts, but you always found your way back. Slowly, your voice became so familiar it started sounding like my own. Now I can’t tell where you end and I begin.
You became my mirror.
Not one made of glass, but one built from every regret I’ve refused to let go of. It never showed my kindness, my growth, or the parts of me still worth knowing. It only showed the version of me you wanted me to believe.
So I stopped asking what I looked like.
I started asking who I was.
Are you showing me the truth,
or only the parts I’m afraid are true?
People say memories fade.
Mine don’t.
They settle inside me like stones at the bottom of a river. The water keeps flowing, life keeps moving, but the stones stay exactly where they are.
Maybe that’s why you never disappear.
You live inside every memory I never forgave, convincing me that my past deserves more of my future than I do.
I am not every mistake I’ve ever made.
I am not every memory that keeps me awake at night.
I am not the voice that tells me to give up before I’ve even begun.
Those things happened.
They shaped me.
But they don’t get to become me.
You’ll probably always follow me. You’ll whisper when I’m already doubting myself. You’ll wait inside that mirror, hoping I’ll mistake your reflection for my identity once again.
Maybe memories never really leave.
Maybe they become shadows, following us until we decide they no longer know us better than we know ourselves.
But a shadow can only exist because somewhere, there is light.
So I’ll stop asking whether you’re real.
Instead, I’ll ask why I believed you for so long.
Maybe the answer was never hidden in the darkness beside me.
Maybe it was waiting in the person behind the mirror—the one you’d convinced me I’d lost.
So tell me…
Are you for real?