Demoiselle en Détresse

I have lived through the consequences of my own certainty. I have chosen things I did not have the capacity to sustain. I have insisted on paths I did not truly understand. And when they collapsed, I called it fate — when perhaps it was simply my limitation.

So in these past few years, my prayer has changed. It is no longer, “Bless what I choose.” It has become, “Choose for me.”

Not because I reject responsibility. But because I have learned that freedom without surrender can become self-destruction. I know what my trauma does to my judgment. I know how guilt distorts courage. I know how insecurity can masquerade as conviction. I no longer trust every desire that rises from within me.

I do not want to live as if I am the highest authority over my own life. I want to be led — whether through sharpened reason, purified intuition, or undeniable reality placed before me. I do not ask for certainty. I ask for alignment.

thus, I could do little more than offer my prayers,

hoping the burden might be divided in kindness,

and gently carried, if only in part, by an angel.

to unthread myself from the world and its voices.

Days when I long to restart my life—

to press reset, to rewind the damage,

to live again with softer hands and fewer mistakes.

There are moments when regret sits beside me,

heavy with the faces I have wounded,

with the things I did while trying to survive.

There are days I am tired of effort,

weary of becoming better,

sick of routines that repeat like unhealed scars.

Some mornings, I wake and feel no pull toward anywhere,

no reason to move, no hunger for the day.

And sometimes—

sometimes I wish I could stay asleep,

untouched by light,

If he’s fundamentally not right and emotionally immature, taking things seriously with him will always be difficult.

You are traumatized because your emotions were never allowed to stay.

They were always rushed, minimized, redirected, or quietly pushed aside. You learned that feeling too deeply was inconvenient, that sadness needed to be wrapped up quickly, that pain had an expiration date. So you didn’t lose love—you lost permission. Permission to linger in your feelings, to be held there, to exist without having to explain or soften yourself.

And when you try to give that part of yourself to other people, it never feels the same. It just doesn’t land the same way. Because when I really sit with it, there is only one person who will care that deeply. One person who is willing to truly listen. One person who doesn’t deny your pain when you’re clearly not okay.

That person listens when you can’t form words—when all you can do is cry. They stay when you fall apart. They willingly spend their time, their energy, their patience, just to make sure you feel okay again. Not because they have to, but because they want to.

And that person is only one.

God only sends one soul who can hold us like that.

And maybe… we’ve already lost that person.

At the beginning, they pursue because their ego lives there. Chasing makes them feel capable, desired, “man enough.” Convincing you that you are worthy, that you will be happy with them—often has little to do with you, and much more to do with the sense of power and validation they gain from the process.

The problem is, validation has a short lifespan. When the thrill of “winning,” curiosity, and ego-driven excitement fades, what remains is reality: commitment, emotional responsibility, consistency. And that is usually the point where many of them retreat. Not because you are lacking, but because they are not prepared to keep fighting once they are no longer entertained.

That’s why it feels like everything was a lie. But more accurately, the intentions were never aligned from the start. You came to build us. They came to satisfy me.

It’s strange. It feels like something that belongs in movies — yet it actually exists in real life. And I keep going back and forth between being disturbed and oddly impressed by people like that. I don’t know if they’re romanticizing their own waiting, or if they genuinely believe they’re “waiting in God’s timing” or something like that. Either way, it feels absurd.

Because honestly, I find that kind of thing terrifying. It feels obsessive — but at the same time, there’s something weirdly romantic about it. Especially if, throughout all that waiting, they never tried to sabotage your relationships or interfere with your life. Still… why are some people that passive? Just silently hoping they’ll get to be with you someday, without doing anything?

One of the first things I learned is:

You cannot be passive in understanding your partner.

Listening isn’t a background task, it’s an active skill. You need to be their supporter, their sounding board, and sometimes the person who grounds them when their ambitions drift too far from reality. And doing that well requires clarity, kindness, and timing.

Which leads to something even more essential than communication:

Understanding.

People romanticize “communication” as the magic fix for everything, but communication without understanding is just noise. I experienced this firsthand. I demanded emotional openness from someone who simply didn’t communicate the same way I did and I refused to acknowledge that difference. It taught me that you need understanding before you can build meaningful communication.

If you want a relationship that’s honest and blunt, agree on that.

If you prefer softness, agree on that too.

Communication only works when both people align on the tone, not just the content.

Then there’s the art of recognizing limits.

A healthy relationship requires the sensitivity to know when your partner is genuinely stretched thin. If he’s exhausted from work and caring for his family, why would I insist on being picked up when I can go home by myself? Empathy is not sacrifice, it’s emotional intelligence.

I also learned the importance of honoring each other’s personal boundaries.

I don’t enjoy crowded weekends, and the people I’ve been with have understood that. They don’t force me, unless something truly matters, and they explain why. That kind of mutual respect goes a long way.

And of course, there’s the financial aspect.

And what remedy do they employ? Why, they consign their children to schools and servants, and then profess astonishment when the latter remarks, “Madam, your child spends every waking hour with me.” One might almost pity the child, had the servant not possessed such tenderness of heart.

I make no claim to moral superiority, heaven knows I am as imperfect as any woman, but I have seen enough to conclude that not every mother’s virtue is as luminous as her social display might suggest.

It does amuse me greatly how some are ever so eager to declare that unmarried women know nothing of child-rearing or domestic grace. And yet, if one were to observe closely, it seems they themselves began in the same ignorance and, I daresay, many have yet to emerge from it. Their children, poor souls, appear to sense it most keenly, for they seldom delight in their parents’ company.

When it comes, I am submerged again. The present dissolves, the years fold inward, and I am once more that same trembling creature, watching the same shadow pass across the wall. I ask God—quietly, almost timidly—to release me from this tenderness that binds me to pain, to free me from the threads I have tied around my own heart.

I long to hear Him, not as thunder but as a whisper, the kind that reaches the soul before the ear. For I am weary of wandering among these echoes, waiting for a light that does not wound.

I have never truly succeeded in releasing myself from these dreadful feelings. Perhaps this is what they call trauma bonding—a strange thread, invisible yet unbreakable, weaving itself between pain and memory. There are moments when my chest tightens, and the air feels too narrow to breathe. At times, my tears fall without reason, as if my body remembers something my mind cannot bear to name. And sometimes, silence feels safer than speech; words crumble before they can escape my lips.