don’t need to be loved

Verse

I don’t need to be held

I know what hands do when they shake

I don’t need to be chosen

I’ve seen how quickly choice decays

I don’t need a voice to call me home

I built walls out of my name

I don’t need love to tell me I exist

I’ve bled enough to stay

Pre-Chorus

Some wounds don’t want comfort

They want distance

They want air

Chorus

I don’t need to be loved

I need to be left intact

I don’t need a heart that opens

Just to ask for itself back

If your love needs me smaller

Needs me quiet, needs me less

I don’t need to be loved

I need to be whole

And that’s it

Verse

I don’t need to be seen

I know what eyes take inventory

I don’t need forever spoken

By someone scared of longevity

I’ve been adored like a surface

Touched but never kept

Every “stay” was temporary

Every promise slept

Pre-Chorus

I don’t mistrust the feeling

I mistrust the exit

Built inside it

Chorus

I don’t need to be loved

I need to be left intact

I don’t need a heart that opens

Just to ask for itself back

If your love needs me smaller

Needs me quiet, needs me less

I don’t need to be loved

I need to be whole

And that’s it

that’s it

And that’s it

Bridge

There are things love never asks about

The nights you survive

The parts of you that don’t perform

The will to stay alive

If loving me costs comfort

If it costs the lie

Don’t dress your fear up as fate

And call it goodbye

Break

I didn’t give up on love

I just stopped begging it

To tell the truth

Final Chorus

I don’t need to be loved

If it fractures when it’s tried

I don’t need warmth that disappears

The moment I collide

If your devotion has conditions

If it trembles when I stand

I don’t need to be loved

I need to stay

Who I am

Outro

I’m not lonely

I’m unowned

And there’s a difference

You’ll never know

there’s a difference

(You’ll never know)