I don't know when my hands became a resting bay for broken people, but I have suffered too many cuts and open wounds to keep doing this.
I don't know when I became the nurse to people who didn't want to be nursed. I don't know when I started offering my body as shelter for those people who just needed a pit stop. That they didn't come here to be healed, to be fixed or to love or to be loved. They came for a break. For their humanity to be validated.

I don't know when I started cleaning all wounds, stitching them up and whispering prayers so that these scars would heal. I don't know when I started offering the inside of my ribs by splitting my chest open and allowing people to live inside of them while they drop pieces of their broken glass all over my insides, instead of me having water inside of me it became other people's pain and blood and I started to breathe out hot air in a form of pain that isn't even my own. I turned myself into the protector of those who don't want protection, they just want to break.
My love to them was a sticker. It was a moment. A fleeting instant that reminded them that they are worthy of some type of love. That my arms have become tired and my shoulders have sunk from carrying worn our bodies to be in recovery mode. That I'm tired of loving people so hard that I no longer even like myself.

I'm tired of mothering a generation of people who have their own mothers. Of offering myself, an exchange for validation and visibility to be seen. Sometimes your purpose is to serve the world with honesty. Sometimes your purpose starts by being able to deliver everything you are giving to the world for free to yourself. And that is hard because no one wants people to be selfish. We want people to be selfless. We want people to be empty, have no sense of self so that they can give everything that they are and become nothing but a shell. That we become skeletons tattooed with other people's stories and our hollow bones are dancing grounds for people trying to find their footing.

No one wants you to be self full. No one wants your glass full. No wants you fully watered and fully seeded. They want you half ass so they can take some and tell you good job for offering what little you have.
But when they're good and heal. Nobody looks back because we're told to never look back, to keep moving forward. No matter what you've left behind, it's behind, right? I don't know when my hands became a resting bay in hospitals for broken people.

I dunno when I've offered my bones and their hollowness to be a home for somebody who's just trying to find their footing. I don't know when I've offered my skin and my flesh for people to dig their teeth into so they can eliminate the rage they feel by drawing blood out of my skin and me offering myself as a place for all their pain and rage to go into. And people wonder why now I'm silent because I am drowning in others voices. I am drowned in others screams and I am heavy with the weight of their bodies. And they found the glow in my eyes and robbed me of it with no thank you in exchange.

I don't know when I became that person that convinced myself that my serving of people and serving myself to people that will feast on my life flesh and say, well, you offered, it became my existence.
But I'm retiring that job. Because I will feed me, heal me, take care of me, and my corpse will not be your home. That will be my children's thrones and they will thrive in them.

You are an invited guest that now has been given an eviction letter. That I don't need your body here to feel complete anymore. That I have too many scars and my bones ache, and my knees hurt, and I am all prayed out for you, and it's your time to go and it's time to learn to pray for you and get on your feet and use your own back and stand straight without me because you can do that. You will do that. I don't know when, but I know when it will end.