Breaking the Rules. Reclaiming Myself.

Breaking the Rules. Reclaiming Myself.

What rules do I want to break?All of them.

I want to scream from the mountaintop.I want to feel alive in my skin.I want to come first, to myself.

Because for too long, I’ve been last. Not just by accident, by design.Taught to be last.

Taught that as a mother, my needs can wait. That my job is to pour and pour and pour, until I’m hollow, and still, somehow, be enough.Taught that as a woman, love is something I earn by giving everything away. That being exhausted makes me good. That silence makes me likable. That shrinking makes me safe.

I’m breaking that rule first.Because I’m not fine.

I’ve been saying “I’m okay” with a knot in my chest. Saying “I’ve got it” when I’m falling apart.Saying “I don’t need anything” while quietly hoping someone might see through it.

But I do need. I need to be held.I need to be fed.I need to be cherished, by me first.

If I’m the one holding everyone else, who holds me?If I’m the source of care, why don’t I get to be cared for?

Who told me I had to go last? Who told me my voice should stay small? Who taught me to call self-abandonment love?

I’m done with all of that.

I want to be loud.I want to be whole. I want to take up space without apologizing for it.

The woman in me, the one I buried under duty, under shame, under “be nice”, she’s still here.She’s wild.She’s soft.She’s sacred.And she’s not hiding anymore.

I go first now.I listen when I’m tired. I stop explaining why I need rest.I say what I want.I give myself what I used to wait for.Because I’m not here to prove my worth through pain.

That rule, the one that says I come last? It’s done.It’s broken.And I’ll never follow it again.