Should’ve, Could’ve… But I Didn’t

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Artist name: SH8

[Intro]

Everyone has advice

when the story isn’t theirs.

Everybody’s brave

with advice they don’t own.

[Verse 1]

Everybody’s brave with advice they don’t own,

judging scars they never earned

from a throne they call home.

“Should’ve stayed.”

“Could’ve tried.”

“Blood’s thicker,” they claim,

said by people raised warm

who don’t flinch at a name.

They say “family’s family,”

like that erases the damage,

like survival is wrong

if you leave with your standards.

They saw a person nice and kind,

smiling at them, being benign,

but at home I saw that same guy

switch tone, switch face, switch mind.

I was a child and I learned to protect,

got a bit of a hero complex as an effect.

While they saw charm in the daylight scene,

I saw the dark behind the “decent” sheen.

You call it family, I call it a loop,

a cycle repeated with a different excuse.

You call it forgive, I call it restart,

and I don’t re-enter what tears me apart.

[Pre-Chorus]

You don’t know what it’s like

to grow up on alert,

read moods like landmines,

learn love through the hurt.

You don’t know what it costs

to be built from the ground,

no net, no guide,

still expected to be sound.

[Chorus]

So keep your should’ve,

keep your could’ve,

keep your comfort-made advice.

You don’t get to name the damage,

you were never there that night.

I chose myself,

I sealed that gate,

I didn’t play martyr or saint.

I walked out alive,

kept my mind,

and I won’t feel shame.

So keep your tone,

keep your throne,

keep your morals made of gold.

They don’t translate to my bones,

they don’t know what I was told.

I got out clean,

or close enough,

with a soul they couldn’t take.

Call me cold, call me changed,

I just did what I had do to be saved.

[Verse 2]

You say “you’re cold now,”

nah, I’m calculated.

When you grow up unprotected,

you don’t stay uneducated.

You say “you changed,”

yeah, I had to evolve.

You don’t heal in the room

that refuses resolve.

You say “you’re cruel,”

because silence offends,

but I talked myself empty

before cutting the thread.

You call it abandonment,

I call it escape.

I call it choosing a future

without further debate.

You don’t get to narrate

what you never survived.

You don’t get to define

what it took me to shine.

Keep your should’ve,

your could’ve, your tone,

your comfort-made morals

don’t translate to my bones.

[Pre-Chorus]

You don’t know what it’s like

when home is a warning,

when peace feels strange

and fear feels normal.

You don’t know what it takes

just to finally choose you,

when love came twisted

and truth came brutal.

[Chorus]

So keep your should’ve,

keep your could’ve,

keep your comfort-made advice.

You don’t get to name the damage,

you were never there that night.

I chose myself,

I sealed that gate,

I didn’t play martyr or saint.

I walked out alive,

kept my mind,

and I won’t feel shame.

So keep your tone,

keep your throne,

keep your morals made of gold.

They don’t translate to my bones,

they don’t know what I was told.

I got out clean,

or close enough,

with a soul they couldn’t take.

Call me cold, call me changed,

I just did what I had do to be saved.

[Bridge]

If that makes me the villain

in a story that stays neat,

then cool, we agree,

I’ll wear that title in peace.

If your version needs a martyr,

I was never gonna fit.

I chose life over loyalty,

and I’d do that on repeat.

You saw nice,

I saw fear.

You saw calm,

I lived years.

You saw family,

I saw fire.

I got out,

that’s why I’m higher.

[Final Chorus]

So keep your should’ve,

keep your could’ve,

keep your comfort-made advice.

You don’t get to name the damage,

you were never there that night.

I chose myself,

I sealed that gate,

I didn’t play martyr or saint.

I walked out alive,

kept my mind,

and I won’t feel shame.

So keep your tone,

keep your throne,

keep your morals made of gold.

They don’t translate to my bones,

they don’t know what I was told.

I got out clean,

or close enough,

with a soul they couldn’t take.

Call me cold, call me changed,

I just did what I had do to be saved.

[Outro]

Everyone has advice

when the story isn’t theirs.

But survival sounds ugly

to the people who were spared.