If I had the heart to be cruel, maybe I’d know what it feels like to stop bleeding.

I sometimes wish my soul wasn’t made of soft things.

I wish i had the capacity for cruelty — to let anger seep into my bones until it burns everything tender about me.

The kind that sets fire to bridges, and never looks back to watch the flames consume what’s left behind. The kind that thrives in the wreckage it creates, and wouldn’t care about the sound of splintering hearts.

I envy the ease with which some people leave. They turn their backs without hesitation while the world they left collapses behind them. I’ve tried to imagine what it feels like to let go of someone like shedding a coat you’ve grown tired of wearing. To release the memories, and stolen glances as though they were never yours to begin with.

How does it feel to cut ties without trembling hands? to walk away without your knees buckling beneath the gravity of it all?

Some people made leaving look like breathing. Like it is the simplest, most natural thing in the world, while i’ve spent every second since suffocating.

And it keeps me up at night — the thought of how did they do it. How do they close their eyes and drift into peace? How can they laugh unburdened by regrets? How can they smile at strangers without wondering if they can see the cracks behind it? To carry the weight of what they did without it burying them alive?

God, i wish i could be that cruel, and not kind.

Cruel enough to let them drown the way i did.

Cruel enough to stand still as they break, and watch the weight of everything they have collapse without lifting a single finger to help.

Cruel enough to turn away without feeling my heart twist.

But i’ll never have it in me to leave people hanging, so i’ll never understand how they made it look so easy. How they could claim they love someone, and then abandon them as if it were just a chapter they’d outgrown, and a season they no longer needed.

Maybe, if i had the capacity for cruelty, i’d know what it feels like to let the fire consume everything and not feel its burn.

But we all know i’ll never have the heart or the stomach for that.

Because that’s not me — And maybe it never will be.