The Cost of Being made by Fire

There is a moment in healing when truth no longer whispers.
It strikes like prophecy.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just undeniable.

It is the moment you realize your heart was never truly held. Only handled. Only passed between hands that never learned the weight of tenderness. You see clearly that you spent lifetimes pouring love into empty rooms, kneeling before the altars of others, trying to be true, trying to be real, trying to be the dependable light you never once received in return.

And still you stood unseen.
A flickering soul in a world of blind eyes.
Carrying warmth no one bothered to feel.

This is the cost of being made of fire.

When you grow up learning to abandon yourself the way others abandoned you, survival becomes muscle memory. You disappear in increments. Piece by piece. Breath by breath. Your spirit thins like smoke slipping through the cracks of a house already burning. You pray for release from the ache beneath your ribs, but the heavens stay silent. You reach for connection with trembling hands and feel like a creature misplaced. An ancient being dropped into a world that cannot understand the language your wounds are speaking.

Your soul does not scream softly.
It collapses like a star.
And the world walks past as if your agony is background noise.

This is how trauma teaches you to die slowly. Not in one clean ending, but in a thousand invisible unravelings. Every attempt to love shatters you further. Glass ribs cracking under the weight of wanting something that never seems to stay. And in the ruins, the whisper begins. You are unworthy. Happiness was never meant for hands like yours. Hands that have known too much trembling.

Some nights you realize hell is not a place.
It is a pulse.
A rhythm carved into your sternum.
A home you never asked for but learned to navigate in the dark.

Happiness becomes a mirage. Beautiful enough to keep you crawling. Cruel enough to vanish when you are inches from touching it. And some days you grow so tired of taking the high road that you imagine marching barefoot to the gates of hell itself, ready to tear down every demon that ever laid claim to your life.

But even vengeance has a price.
And trauma always demands its payment.

This is the truth of complex wounds.
This is the mythology of C-PTSD.

Not weakness.
Not fragility.
But a heart that burns even while breaking.
A soul forged from wildfire and ruin that refuses to stay buried no matter how many times the world tries to extinguish it.

People misunderstand fire. They think it only destroys. They forget it also illuminates. They forget it also purifies. They forget it also forges what cannot be broken by gentler means.

When you are made of fire, you learn to survive infernos others could not endure. You learn to stand in emotional earthquakes and still offer warmth. You learn how to love from ashes. You learn how to breathe inside storms. And yes, you learn the unbearable loneliness of carrying heat in a world that fears being burned.

But beneath the ash, something always stirs.

Fragile.
Feral.
Unwilling to die.

A stubborn spark that believes even hell cannot hold you forever.

If you are reading this and recognizing yourself, know this. You were never too much. You were forged in too much. And you are not broken for still burning. You are not weak for still wanting love after everything that tried to teach you it was unsafe.

You are living proof that survival can look like poetry.
That resilience can look like rage and tenderness braided together.
That healing is not the absence of fire but learning how to wield it without burning yourself alive.

The cost of being made of fire is pain.
But the gift is power.

And one day, when your hands stop trembling and your heart finally rests in a place that knows how to hold heat without fear, you will realize the truth you always carried.

You were never meant to be extinguished.
You were meant to light the dark.