what didn’t choose me

Verse I

I loved you like the tide loves the shore

Never asking if it stayed

I learned your breathing in the dark

I learned your silence the same way

You held me like a temporary thing

Like I was meant to fade

But I don’t break just because

You didn’t know how to stay

Pre-Chorus

I kept giving you pieces of me

Hoping you’d see the whole

But love doesn’t grow in hands

That don’t know how to hold

Chorus

You didn’t ruin me

You revealed me

You showed me what I deserve

I thought losing you would empty me

But I found my worth in the hurt

I don’t hate the way it ended

I don’t drown in what it was

Some love is only meant

To teach you how to love yourself enough

Verse II

I waited in rooms where you weren’t present

Even when you were there

I mistook longing for connection

And patience for repair

I tried to be smaller, quieter, easier

So you wouldn’t pull away

But love that asks you to disappear

Isn’t love — it’s delay

Pre-Chorus II

I don’t regret the way I loved you

I just outgrew the cost

Some people are lessons

Not losses

Chorus

You didn’t ruin me

You revealed me

You showed me what I deserve

I thought losing you would empty me

But I found my worth in the hurt

I don’t curse the nights I cried

Or the prayers I couldn’t trust

Some love is only meant

To teach you how to love yourself enough

Bridge (soft, intimate, Vessel-style)

I was never too much

I was just misplaced

I was speaking devotion

To someone fluent in escape

And I don’t need you

To validate the way I feel

I survived the breaking

Now I choose what’s real

Final Chorus (swells, emotional release)

You didn’t ruin me

You revealed me

I see myself clearer now

I let you go without hatred

And I’m still standing in the sound

I don’t carry what you couldn’t hold

I don’t beg for what you lost

If loving you led me back to me

Then the pain was worth the cost

Outro

I step out of the water

Still dripping, still warm

What didn’t choose me

Didn’t get to