𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐘𝐀

because i keep thinking—when did i become that in your mind?

not in a dramatic way. not in a story way. just… when did i become something you had to heal from instead of someone who was just there, trying to be honest, and careful, and human in the only way i knew how.

i keep going back to everything, and it all looks the same from my side. normal conversations. normal silence. normal distance when i didn’t know how else to exist without promising things i couldn’t give. and maybe that’s the part that hurts the most, because what felt like restraint on my end might have felt like rejection on yours.

and i can’t tell where the line is anymore between protecting someone and accidentally hurting them by not being able to meet them where they hoped i would.

i don’t even know what version of me you carried in your head while all of this was happening. i don’t know what moments got heavier than they looked. i don’t know what words landed differently than i intended them to. i just know that somewhere between my intention and your experience, something didn’t translate the way i thought it did.

and now i’m stuck here, trying to understand something i was never aware was breaking.

and it’s messing with me because i never wanted to be someone’s after-effect. i never wanted to be a reason someone had to rebuild themselves. i never wanted to exist in someone’s memory like a place they survived.

i just know i never wanted to be someone you had to survive from.

and maybe the hardest part is realizing that intention doesn’t always protect people from impact. so now i’m left with all these questions that don’t have clean answers. just silence. just the gap between how i meant things and how they were received. just the uncomfortable truth that two people can be living completely different emotional realities in the same timeline without either of them fully realizing it until it’s already too late to undo.

and i don’t know what i’m supposed to do with that except sit in it and try to understand where i stand in something that already feels like it ended before i even knew it was ending.

there is a kind of love that does not ask to be spoken. it just grows in the quiet, in the in-between moments where you are not guarding your heart closely enough. and by the time you notice it, it is already there—alive, stubborn, undeniable. and that is where the real violence begins… not from them, not from anything they did, but from the collision inside me. between what i feel and what i am allowed to feel. between longing and faith. between being human and trying so hard not to be wrong.

i keep thinking maybe it would be easier if it stayed unnamed. because the moment i give it language, it becomes something i have to answer for. something i have to carry like a consequence. and i have called myself a sinner more times than i can count, not even out loud—just in the spaces where no one hears me breathe. because how do you reconcile devotion with desire that was never supposed to exist in the same body?

it is not them that hurts me. it is the impossibility of them. it is the way my heart does not seem to understand boundaries that my faith draws so clearly. it is the way silence feels like the only form of obedience left. and still… it exists. still it stays. still it returns even when i try to erase it with guilt, with prayer, with forgetting.

there is no version of this where it becomes “us.” there is only this endless in-between: feeling something sacred in a place where it is not allowed to be sacred.

and maybe that is the most painful truth of all—

not that i loved,

but that i was never meant to keep it,

you know, people say the weirdest things sometimes. like, i’ll just be doing my thing, right? and then someone says something like, ‘you’re so beautiful.’ or ‘you have such a great smile.’ and i’m just sitting there, looking at them like… are you talking to me? you know?

i hear it, and i want to believe it, i do. but… i can’t. it’s like, when you look in the mirror, you don’t see what they see, right? you see… yourself. you see all the parts you wish were different, all the things you wish you could change. you don’t see whatever it is they’re seeing.

like, someone told me i have this great energy, you know? i’ve heard that before. and i’m like, what do you even mean by that? energy? i can’t even get through the day without feeling completely drained. i feel like i’m running on empty half the time. i’m not this, like, glowing, positive person all the time. hell, i can barely get out of bed some days. and yet… people are out here acting like i’m some kind of radiant light? how does that even make sense?

i mean, maybe it’s me. maybe i’m just, i don’t know, too busy looking at all the stuff that’s wrong with me. it’s easy to pick yourself apart, right? i’m used to looking at the flaws. like, maybe i’m not as ugly as i think, but i’m sure as hell not whatever they’re seeing. i mean, i’ve had people tell me i’m smart, but i can barely put a thought together without second-guessing it. you know what i mean? like, intelligence? really? maybe i can solve a puzzle or two, but i’m not out here making groundbreaking stuff. smart people, they just know things. they walk into a room and own it. and me? i’m just trying to survive the damn day without messing up too much. so, what the hell do they see in me?

and don’t even get me started on the ‘you’re so strong’ thing. people love to say that. like, strong? i don’t feel strong. i feel like i’m barely holding it together some days. i can fake it, sure, but there’s this little voice in my head that’s just screaming, like, what if they knew the truth? what if they knew how close i am to falling apart?

maybe i just can’t accept it because, deep down, i feel like if i let myself believe it, then what happens when it all falls apart? you know? what happens if i actually believe someone when they say i’m beautiful and strong and smart, and then i screw up? what does that say about me? what does it mean if i can’t live up to this… version of me they have in their heads?

sometimes i think it’d be easier if people just didn’t say anything. at least that way i wouldn’t have to pretend like i believe them. but then again, i wonder—if i really am all of that… why can’t i see it? why do i have such a hard time accepting it? why does it feel like they’re talking about someone else every time they say something nice to me?

maybe i’ll never see it like they do. maybe that’s just how it is. but it’s weird, right? to hear something so kind and… feel like it doesn’t fit. like it’s a suit that’s too big for you. you wear it, but it never feels like it’s yours.