One who stays

**The One Who Stays**

*30 BPM · dark cynical grunge blues horrorcore aggressive trap*

(slow, heavy, almost still… 808s dragging like a body through mud, guitar rotting under every line)

I was small and the rooms were full of adults who never looked

Teachers, counselors, faces that turned the other way on purpose

I told them what the perverts did and they told me to shut up

Said keep quiet or you’ll be the one in trouble

They didn’t forget.

They just decided I wasn’t worth the paperwork.

Mind-fucked the truth until I couldn’t tell what was real

Bought the silence with soft words and quiet threats

Gaslit every report until I learned the real lesson:

Nobody listens. Nobody ever did.

Negligent hands raised me in the dark

Overlooked the ADHD static crawling under the skin

The autistic overload that drowned me from within

Borderline edges, depression thick as tar

CPTSD still driving the fucking car

They called every meltdown a tantrum

Every shutdown a choice

Every scream “too much”

Every silent child “problem”

I grew up believing I was the broken thing they said I was

Because that’s what works.

That’s how the system stays clean.

I named every disorder myself years too late

Dug the diagnoses out of the dirt they left behind

If anyone had protected that child when she still needed it

I wouldn’t still be scraping her bones out of the silence

But I’m the adult now

The one who never looks away

Not because I’m noble

Because no one else ever fucking will

I stand between the past and this body like a locked steel door

I protect what’s left of her with teeth and blood and absolute force

And some nights I still fail

Some nights the old silence wins anyway

No more silence bought with fear

No more adults who saw and chose nothing

I keep the girl they abandoned under my own roof

I guard her from every shadow that still tries to crawl back in

I talk to her in the dark when the old voices start again

I tell her she was never the problem

I tell her the adults failed her on purpose

I tell her the bribes and the gaslight and the looking-away

were never her fault to carry

And she still doesn’t fully believe me.

Because she learned the truth first.

I am the fierce parent she never had

The one who believes her the first time

The one who doesn’t need proof

doesn’t need politeness

doesn’t need the world to agree that it happened

Thirty years later the same low pulse still runs under my skin

But this time the monster in the room is me

And I don’t hurt the child

I just keep her

I keep her

I keep her

When the panic comes I don’t leave the room

When the shutdown hits I sit on the floor with her

When the old shame tries to rewrite the story

I rip the page out and burn it in front of her eyes

I became the adult I needed

Not because it healed anything

Because the alternative is letting them win again

I am the locked door

I am the steel