The Cost Of Saving Me. Poem by Charlene Lee

To the world, I am a pillar, standing firm and tall,
The one who holds the ceiling up, the one who will not fall.
'She's the strongest, ' so they whisper, beneath an open sky,
While they miss the rising water and the shadows in my eye.

But I am drowning in a quiet, a deep and dark despair,
Reaching for a glimmer in the cold and heavy air.
I lock onto the smallest things to keep my mind afloat,
A tiny scrap of sunlight, or a soft and hopeful note.

A mother with a history, a past that's scarred and vast,
But today I'm only 'Mummy, ' with a mask that's made to last.
Yet I look into the mirror and I see a hollow space,
A woman lost in service, searching for a familiar face.

My childhood was a mountain, with tasks too large to hold,
With hands too small for burdens, in a world that felt so cold.
The weight of all the abuse, the chores, the heavy years,
I learned to hide the trembling and to swallow back the fears.

I traded in my spirit just to keep my soul alive,
I lost the girl I used to be, just so I could survive.
I spent my life in rescue, a hero in the dark,
But I lost myself in saving me—I extinguished my own spark.

Now I stand at the beginning, and I don't know where to start,
With a map of many fractures and a tired, aching heart.
But 'Mummy' is a title, and the 'Strongest' is a name,
While the woman underneath them learns to breathe again, the same.