Verse 1
I never hated photographs
Never dressed to disappear
Never needed someone else’s eyes
To like the girl inside the mirror
Then you started asking casually
If I’d ever change my chest
So quick to offer improvements
Never saying you loved the rest
Every day another comment
What I ate or shouldn’t eat
Always something I could work on
Always something incomplete
Funny, you had endless adjectives
For every girl we’d see
But somehow all that vocabulary
Went missing when it came to me
Pre-Chorus
You said I shouldn’t need to hear it
Maybe technically that’s true
But I never needed it from everyone
I only wanted it from you
Chorus
Never until you
Did I wonder if I was enough
Never until you
Did I learn what it’s like to feel untouched
You never reached like you had to
Never looked like you couldn’t wait
I learned to feel undesirable
Lying inches from your face
You said you called me “sexy”
Like that proved what you could see
But “sexy” was your pet name
Not something you believed about me
Verse 2
You never called me beautiful
Then said I shouldn’t care
While “God, she’s hot” came easily
For women everywhere
It wasn’t that I needed praise
To make me feel complete
I just wondered why your admiration
Always stopped before it reached me
You were quick to tell me how to change
What “better” might become
But never looked me up and down
Like I was already the one
Never touched me like you needed me
Never pulled me close in bed
Sex felt like another obligation
You’d rather skip instead
Chorus
Never until you
Did getting naked feel this tough
Never until you
Did I wonder what I didn’t have enough of
I spent years inside this body
Never seeing what you seemed to see
Then the man I wanted most
Made wanting me look exhausting
You said I shouldn’t need the words
But that was never what hurt most
You gave them freely to the world
Then rationed them at home
Bridge
And then you cheated
What perfect punctuation
After months of comparisons
And quiet humiliation
Every body you’d admired
Every feature I wasn’t blessed with
Turned from passing conversation
Into evidence you’d left with
I didn’t only lose my trust in you
I lost some in myself
Started borrowing your vision
Every time I saw myself
Final Chorus
But never after you
Will I give someone that kind of say
Never after you
Will another man’s desire define my shape
You didn’t make me undesirable
You just made it feel that way
I confused you not appreciating me
With me needing to be changed
I was beautiful before you
I’ll be beautiful when you’re gone
There was never something wrong with me
Your eyes were simply wrong