i don’t remember exactly when I learned that love leaves.
I just know I learned it far too young.
Before I understood abandonment, I understood the feeling of it.
Before I knew what trauma was, my body already knew how to survive it.
Before I should have been worrying about anything more complicated than homework, sleepovers and what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was learning how quickly safe could become scary.
How people who were supposed to protect you sometimes didn’t.
How the people you desperately needed could hurt you, disappoint you, choose themselves, disappear, or simply look the other way.
And somewhere in all of that, a little girl made a decision she never should have needed to make:
I’ll take care of myself.
So she did.
She grew up too young and too fast because survival was on repeat.
She learned to read a room before she learned to understand her own emotions.
She learned when to be quiet.
When to make people laugh.
When to disappear.
When to be useful.
When to pretend something didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did.
She learned that being strong earned praise, while being needy felt dangerous.
So she became strong.
Really fucking strong.
The kind of strong people admire without ever stopping to wonder what happened to make a child believe she needed that much armor in the first place.
And underneath every layer of it was one painfully simple wish:
Please, somebody love me enough to stay.
Not because I was good.
Not because I was helpful.
Not because I made life easier.
Not because I accomplished something, fixed something, carried something or took care of everyone else.
Just because I was me.
I wanted someone to find that scared little girl hiding underneath all that survival and tell her she could finally stop fighting.
I wanted to be chosen.
Protected.
Saved.
Loved without conditions.
And I think some part of me has been waiting for that my entire life.
Which makes adulthood rather fucking complicated when someone actually tries to love me.
Because now loving hands reach toward me…
and sometimes I flinch.
Sometimes I pull away before I even realize I’m doing it.
Sometimes I make a joke because vulnerability makes my skin crawl.
Sometimes I say, “I’m fine,” while silently begging someone to know that I’m absolutely fucking not.
Sometimes I apologize for crying.
For needing reassurance.
For needing anything at all.
Sometimes I push people away just enough to see if they’ll fight their way back.
Sometimes I start grieving people who haven’t even left yet.
Because underneath this grown woman—the independent, capable, loud, sarcastic, put-together woman who can manage chaos, carry everyone else and somehow still remember to match her shoes to her outfit—is still that little girl.
And she remembers.
She remembers what it felt like to need people who couldn’t give her what she needed.
She remembers learning that love could come with conditions.
She remembers discovering that forever is sometimes just something people say before they leave.
So when someone gets too close, she starts whispering:
Careful.
Don’t need them too much.
Don’t let them see everything.
Don’t get comfortable.
Don’t believe them when they say they’re staying.
You know how this ends.
And for a very long time, I listened to her.
Because she wasn’t trying to ruin my relationships.
She was trying to save me.
That little girl built these walls because once upon a time they were the only protection she had.
So I don’t hate her for being afraid.
I don’t shame her for flinching.
I don’t tell her to “get over it.”
She has heard enough versions of that in one lifetime.
Instead, I’m trying to teach her something new.
Not everyone leaves.
Not every kindness has an invoice attached.
Not every loving hand eventually becomes a fist.
Not every person who sees the messy, scared, complicated parts of me decides they are too much.
Some people stay.
Some people sit beside you on the floor when you cannot stand.
Some people reach for you without trying to control you.
Some people see the armor and don’t demand you rip it off. They simply stand close enough, long enough, that eventually you realize you might not need it around them.
And God, that terrifies me.
Because I know how to survive abandonment.
I know how to survive disappointment.
I know how to survive heartbreak.
I have a fucking PhD in figuring out how to keep moving when everything inside me wants to collapse.
But being loved gently?
Being cared for without having to earn it?
Being allowed to fall apart without someone treating my broken pieces like an inconvenience?
That is unfamiliar territory.
So I’m learning.
I’m trying.
I’m growing.
I am learning not to mistake tenderness for danger.
I am learning not to interrogate kindness looking for hidden conditions.
I am learning that someone reaching out their hand doesn’t automatically mean they’ll eventually rip it away.
And when those loving hands reach for me now, I am desperately trying not to flinch.
Sometimes I still do.
But now I try to reach back anyway.
Because maybe healing isn’t becoming a woman who never gets scared.
Maybe healing is becoming a woman who can feel that terrified little girl trembling inside her and whisper:
I know, baby.
But this might be safe.
We can try.
And somewhere along this journey, I’ve realized something else.
That little girl spent her whole childhood waiting for someone to save her.
And eventually…
I did.
Not in the way she dreamed about.
No one came riding in and rewrote what happened.
No one gave her back the childhood she deserved.
No one erased the nights she was afraid, the people who failed her, the losses that broke her or all the years she spent wondering why she wasn’t enough to make someone love her differently.
I wish I could give her that.
God, I wish I could.
But I can give her something now.
Me.
I can reach backward through every ugly year and take her hand.
I can protect her now.
I can choose her now.
I can let her cry.
I can let her rest.
I can stop making her prove she deserves love.
I can stop abandoning myself just because I’m terrified someone else eventually will.
I can finally tell her:
You don’t have to earn your place here.
You don’t have to perform.
You don’t have to save everybody.
And you sure as hell don’t have to keep bleeding just to prove you’re strong enough to survive.
Maybe saving yourself doesn’t mean you never need anyone.
I used to think it did.
I thought independence meant needing absolutely no one.
But that wasn’t independence.
That was survival wearing a cute outfit and pretending she had her shit together.
Saving myself means knowing I can stand on my own while still allowing someone to stand beside me.
It means knowing I can pull myself up while still accepting the hands reaching down to help.
It means understanding that loving someone deeply does not require handing them ownership of my worth.
And it means knowing that if someone does leave, I will grieve them.
I will hurt.
I might break for a while.
But I will not disappear with them.
Because I still have me.
Love can leave.
Little me wasn’t wrong about that.
People change.
Relationships end.
Promises break.
Forever sometimes becomes a memory you carry instead of a future you live.
But I’m finally learning that the possibility of losing love is not a reason to spend my entire life hiding from it.
So I’m opening the door.
Slowly.
I’m lowering the armor.
Piece by piece.
I’m letting people see the parts of me I spent decades protecting.
I’m allowing myself to need.
To receive.
To be held.
To believe someone when they say, I’ve got you.
And when fear starts screaming that loving someone means eventually losing them, I remind that scared little girl:
Maybe.
But we are not going to abandon ourselves today because someone else might tomorrow.
So when loving hands reach for us now…
we may still hesitate.
Our heart may race.
Every survival instinct may tell us to run.
We may even flinch.
But we’re learning to reach back.
Because the little girl who spent her life desperately waiting to be saved finally has someone who refuses to leave her.
Me.
And this time, sweet baby girl —
I’m staying.
& we’re surrounding ourselves with others who aren’t going anywhere, either. 🤷♀️
They do exist!
-🩷-
