Stand True Beside You
(A slam for every generation, feminine, masculine, human)
By Sophie Roumeas

You saw her falling,
and you believed that love meant falling with her.
You thought helping
meant forgetting yourself,
emptying out,
shrinking in silence
to make space for her.

You believed love meant disappearing a little,
so she could survive better.

But that wasn’t love.
And no one ever told you.

You silenced your heart to hear her pain.
You paused your body to walk beside her.
You became the echo of her sadness,
the mirror of her night.
And in this reflection,
you couldn’t find yourself anymore.

Codependency,
this comorbidity of the soul,
isn’t just a theory.
It’s an invisible link
stretched between her pain
and your silence.

It’s your nervous system
catching fire with hers.
Your thoughts
aligning with her breaks.
Your breath
syncing with her panic.

But today,
you’re learning to stay whole
even when she falls.
To keep your light
even when she pulls the curtains.
To love her
without destroying yourself.

You can still be there—
present,
anchored,
not perfect,
but alive.
You can reach out
without drowning.

You can say:
I love you
without meaning:
I give myself away.

She has the right to fall.
You have the right to stay standing.
She has the right to suffer.
You have the duty to breathe.

And in that space
between her chaos and your clarity,
a love begins
that no longer hurts.

You’ve come to know:
It isn’t betrayal
to survive.
It isn’t running away
to hold your own boundaries.
It isn’t abandonment
to choose yourself, too.

And again—
in that shared space,
a different kind of love stands.
Wounded no more.

So you rise.
Not to lead her.
Not to save her.
But simply to be there
if one day she chooses to walk with you.

You don’t wait.
You don’t despair.
You’re learning to love
in uncertainty.

And you hold out your hand—
no promises,
no demands,
but with faith.
Faith in that thin thread of humanity
that still connects us all
when everything else feels broken.

You are here.
Ready to love,
another way.
Without losing yourself.
Without adding weight
to her journey.

Just here—
rooted in your own light—
until her present opens
into her own freedom,
her own joy.

And don’t forget:
your empathy is a gift,
not a burden.
But only
if you can stay standing
under the weight of someone else’s pain.

And if you are the one who’s falling—
if the one in the dark
is you—
look around.
See love
in the eyes of those
who do not leave you behind.