Word salad

 Raw, unfiltered truth, brutally honest, a darkly funny mix of poetry and prose … a dive into what it really takes to stay when the performance ends. For anyone done with the bullshit highlight reels and ready for the raw, real, messy, beautiful truth of love that actually fucking lasts. Beyond bullshit to bliss. 

The Things We Don’t Want to Admit About Love (Episode 1)

We say we want love. 

But most of us want control. Comfort. Curation.  Not the kind of love that wrecks you and asks you to stay anyway.

This series is not for the spiritually polite. It’s for the ones who are ready to stop pretending.

To stop calling fear “boundaries.” To stop hiding behind healing. To stop blaming apps, partners, exes, when sometimes, we’re the ones who won’t stay.

Love is not the fantasy. It’s what’s left when the fantasy dies. Let’s talk about that … 

You say you want depth … but you ghost when it gets real … 

You say you want real. You say you’re done with surface-level bullshit. You say you want presence, emotional safety, someone who’s done the work.

But let’s be fucking honest. The moment it gets uncomfortable …  The moment someone sees past your curated calm and into the ache you haven’t dealt with …  The moment they stop performing and start showing up messy, honest, scared … 

You flinch. 

You call it “not aligned.” You ghost. You disappear with a half-spiritual text about “protecting your energy.”

So let’s be fucking brutal here and call it out for what it is …  You don’t want depth. You want fucking comfort. 

Depth demands something of you. It stretches your nervous system. It breaks every performance mask you’ve used to seem “chill.” It calls you to be seen, not just praised.

And that can be terrifying. Because being truly met doesn’t just feel good. It feels exposed.

You say you want honesty. But can you handle someone saying: “I’m scared.”… 

“I don’t feel safe right now.” … “I want to trust you, but I’m still learning how.”

You say you want real. But are you prepared to stay when the work begins? … 

Because that’s where depth lives. Not in the flirting. Not in the spark. Not in your 2am banter about astrology and attachment styles. But in what happens after the first rupture. In how you repair.

In whether you can sit in silence without needing to fix everything.

Love, when it’s real, doesn’t always feel good.  It feels true. And most people are more addicted to comfort than to truth.

So no, depth isn’t a vibe. It’s a fucking practice. It’s staying through discomfort. It’s showing up without the script. It’s telling the truth even when your voice shakes.

It’s learning to breathe through the urge to run.

You don’t want deep love until you’ve trained your system to receive it. Because depth will ask for your past. It’ll stir your wounds. It’ll hold a mirror up to all the ways you’ve never truly let yourself be loved.

And if you’re not ready for that? … 

That’s okay … But own it. Don’t call it misalignment when it’s actually fear. Don’t pretend they were “too intense” when really, they were just present.

Because one day, the person you ghosted for being too much will be the one you remember as the first who actually tried to meet you.

And they’ll be gone.

Because they stopped waiting for someone who kept running from their own reflection.

You said you wanted real,  

but you ran from the mess.

You wanted devotion,

but skipped the depth test.

Now you miss the one

who actually showed up.

But too late … 

They’re gone.

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love (Episode 2)

Couples don’t just stop having sex.

It’s not menopause, midlife, or Mercury in fucking retrograde. It’s the thousand little ways you stopped giving a shit.

It’s the plate you left on the counter again.

It’s the text you couldn’t be bothered to answer. It’s her telling a story while you stare at the football game like a fucking zombie.

Resentment is the ultimate contraceptive.

Silence is kink-repellent. And nothing kills horny faster than feeling unseen.

Sex doesn’t die between the sheets. It dies in the kitchen, in the car, in the sigh you never asked about. It dies in the eye-roll, the forgotten touch, the “whatever” you muttered instead of listening.

By the time you finally notice, her body already knows.

It won’t open to someone it doesn’t trust.

And here’s the harsh reality nobody likes to hear…  

You don’t lose sex because the spark went out. You lose it because you stopped showing up. And no amount of lingerie, tantra retreats, or desperate date nights will fix that.

Not until you unclog the pipe of all the shit you never owned.

The unsaid. The unacknowledged. The unforgiven.

You didn’t lose the sex, you buried it under every moment you stopped giving a fuck.

It wasn’t desire that left the bed,

it was the words you never said.

Bodies don’t close from getting old,

they close when love stops being bold

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love (Episode 3 )

You Keep Choosing Emotionally Unavailable People Because You Are Too. 

Ok, so let’s cut the spiritual Hallmark crap and stop pretending it’s just bad luck. 

You didn’t “accidentally” fall for another emotionally unavailable person. You chose them. Just like the last one. And the one before that.

You chose someone who wouldn’t stay. Who wouldn’t commit. Who gave you breadcrumbs and called it love. 

And your nervous system lit up like a fucking Christmas tree . 

You didn’t “accidentally” fall for another emotionally unavailable human. You walked straight into that circus and bought the season pass … Again

And why ? … Because it was home. Not the good, warm, safe kind …  the familiar kind. The kind where love keeps you hungry. The kind that feels like trying to earn your parent’s attention all over again.

We love to blame them, don’t we? The avoidant, the ghoster, the love bomber, the flake. And sure, they’ve got their own fucking circus of issues. But here’s the part you choke on … you were unavailable, too.

You didn’t pick the one who could love you without conditions. You picked the one who’d make you work for every ounce of attention, because deep down, that’s the script you know. 

You say you want emotional availability , but when someone actually shows up? …  Consistent. Calm. Boring as shit to your trauma? … You call it “too easy.” “No spark.”

And let’s be fucking real here. …  that “spark” you keep chasing?…  That’s just your nervous system recognising danger and calling it passion.

The ones who stay feel alien. Unsettling. Like being seen naked in a room with the lights on and no escape exit. So you sabotage. You pick fights. You ghost. You scroll TikTok until your thumbs ache. You mutter, “I’m just not feeling it,” when what you really mean is, “I don’t know how to feel safe when someone actually sees me.”

So stop calling it a “pattern.” Start calling it what it really is … emotional unavailability in a cute outfit. Because the part of you that keeps choosing people who can’t love you back is the part of you that still doesn’t trust your own heart.

You don’t need more dating advice. You need to sit the fuck down with the part of you that doesn’t trust love won’t hurt again. You need to stop chasing people who aren’t choosing you, and start asking why you feel safest with someone who won’t stay.

Healing doesn’t mean finding the perfect partner. It means finally becoming someone who can let real love in.

So if you’re tired of shifting around, learn to live in your own heart, … then love will finally have somewhere to stay.

Home 

You say they couldn’t show up, 

but neither could you.

You wanted love

without being seen.

But real love doesn’t flirt

with the door still open.

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love (Episode 4) 

You Fell In Love With Their Potential Because You Were Avoiding Your Own

You didn’t fall in love with them. You pitched a tent in their potential and called it home. You stayed, waiting for the miracle, for the day they’d finally choose you, heal, stop running. But that day never came. Because hope isn’t a house. It’s just a campsite for the parts of you too scared to come home. 

If only they healed, if only they chose you, if only they stopped ghosting, spiralling, shutting down, drinking, lying, gaslighting, or running like their hair was on fire.

If only.

But here’s the brutal fucking truth  … you weren’t in love with them. You were in love with a fantasy version of them, one that lived rent-free in your head and gave you just enough hope to keep you from facing the one person you were really avoiding … yourself.

Because loving someone’s potential is a genius form of self-abandonment. You don’t have to own your power when you’re busy trying to fix, rescue, or wait for someone who isn’t ready. You don’t have to confront your calling when you’re hyper-focused on theirs. You get to camp out in emotional limbo,  loyal, exhausted, and knee-deep in a love story that was never actually going to land. 

And I suppose it feels noble. Like devotion. Like a badge of honour for having the stamina to love someone “through their pain.” 

But that isn’t love. It’s avoidance dressed up in romantic martyrdom. 

And beneath it all, here’s the quieter, sharper truth: you chose someone you had to work for because you didn’t yet believe you were worthy of someone who just shows up. So you poured your heart into fixing them instead of facing yourself. You helped them chase their purpose while ignoring the one burning a hole in your own chest. You prayed for their healing so you wouldn’t have to grieve the thing you already knew but didn’t want to admit  …  They’re not going to become who you need. And it’s not your job to get them there. You were never meant to mother their inner child. You were meant to honour yours ,  the one who keeps over-giving, over-loving, over-proving just to feel safe enough to matter. Let that version of you rest. Let the fantasy die.

Because here’s the wild, terrifying, liberating thing … your real life, your real potential, your real becoming ,  it’s been standing there the whole fucking  time, just waiting for you to stop waiting for them.

You didn’t love them. You loved their becoming. Because it gave you an excuse to delay your own.

But potential doesn’t build a home.It just keeps you camping in hope.

You camped in their becoming,

calling it love.

Now the ground is bare,

and you see , 

the home you wanted

was always yours to build. 

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love (Episode 5)

You Don’t Actually Want a Relationship, You Just Want to Be Chosen

You say you want a relationship. You say you’re ready. You say you’re tired of the games, the ghosting, the swiping, the spiritual bypassing, the emotionally unavailable circus with clowns juggling your self-esteem.

But let’s be brutally fucking honest …  You don’t actually want a relationship.

You want to be chosen. 

You want someone to pick you like a prize from the fucked-up carnival of your childhood wounds. Someone to hold up a sign that says: “See? You’re not too much.

You’re not too complicated. You’re not too broken to love.”

But that isn’t love. That’s relief. Relief from the gnawing voice that whispers, “Maybe you’re just not enough.”  

And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be wanted, until you start confusing it with love.

Because love isn’t about being picked like a sad avocado from the bargain bin. Love is about choosing yourself first so you stop settling for half-price offers from people who don’t even know what they want for breakfast, let alone for life.

Here’s the shit nobody wants to admit … 

You can be chosen and still be lonely as fuck. You can have the “relationship” without the intimacy, the partner without the partnership, the Instagram highlight reel without a single moment of real connection. 

Because being chosen doesn’t mean you’re being met. And craving love without self-awareness just turns you into an actor auditioning for a role in someone else’s movie , performing worthiness, praying they don’t notice you’re scared shitless the whole time.

And the really fucked up part ? …  You wouldn’t know how to receive real love if it stood naked in front of you offering snacks and a soft place to land. 

Because receiving requires stillness. And in stillness, all the unhealed shit you’ve been running from kicks down the door.

That’s what you’re really afraid of.

Not being alone. Being alone with yourself.

So if you want real love, stop begging to be picked. Start choosing. Choose boundaries. Choose presence. Choose the uncomfortable truth over the comforting illusion. Choose yourself so fully that anyone who walks in knows they’re there to meet you, not rescue you.

Because, If you don’t choose you first, the people who do choose you will always feel like a fucking consolation prize.

Choosing 

It took years to learn

that love is not the choosing,

it’s the staying , 

especially when the one

you’re staying with

is yourself.

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love ( episode 6 ) 

They Didn’t Emotionally Abandon You. You Just Finally Noticed.

You say they changed. That they stopped showing up. Stopped caring. Stopped making effort. That the intimacy vanished without warning and now you’re left trying to piece together where the fuck it all went wrong.

But here’s the harsh reality … They didn’t emotionally abandon you. You just finally saw it. You finally stopped mistaking consistency for connection. You finally admitted to yourself that the silence wasn’t peaceful, it was empty. You stopped pretending the “I love you” wasn’t delivered with all the passion of a voicemail reminder from your dentist. That the conversations were surface. That you were performing closeness in a relationship where neither of you had been fully present for a while.

And fuck, it hurts.

Because for so long, you were the one doing the heavy lifting. You were the emotional Sherpa of the relationship, carrying all the intimacy up the mountain while they stayed at base camp “thinking about it.” You filled in the blanks. Made excuses. Called their detachment “a phase,” or worse, “normal.”  You over-functioned for both of you and kept the fire going while they stood three steps away from the heat.

You called it love … You called it “going through a phase.” …  You called it “what long-term relationships look like.” … 

But deep down? …  You knew.

You knew when they stopped asking how your day really was. You knew when sex felt like a transaction. You knew when your vulnerability was met with indifference, or worse, silence.

You knew. … You just weren’t ready to lose the story. The identity. The comfort of pretending they were still in it with you. So you stayed. And they drifted. Not suddenly. Not all at once.But in micro-moments you gaslit yourself out of noticing.

And then one day it hits you … 

They’re gone.

Still in the room, still on the lease, still making plans for the weekend, but emotionally?… Gone.

And it’s not that they suddenly abandoned you. It’s that your clarity finally got louder than your fear. You finally stopped negotiating for scraps. Stopped shrinking your needs. Stopped blaming yourself for the distance. And the grief comes rushing in. Not just for what you lost, but for how long you tolerated the slow fade.

But that grief? … That’s sacred. That’s what saves you. Because once you see clearly, you don’t unsee.

And now, you get to stop pretending. Now, you get to stop calling it love when it’s just habit. Now, you get to stop waiting for someone to show up who already emotionally left you fucking years ago 

And that? … That’s the real beginning .

But here’s the hard part nobody tells you … 

The heartbreak is awful. The clarity is worse.

But the freedom? … That’s fucking everything.

BEGINNING

They never left.

You just opened your eyes.

Grief is the door.

Freedom is what walks through

The Things We Don’t Want To Admit About Love (Episode 7)

Your Standards Aren’t Too High, You’re Just Finally Not Abandoning Yourself.

They’ll tell you you’re too much. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too deep. Too honest. Too awake. Too fucking clear about what you want. That’s just what people who haven’t met themselves yet say to people who finally have.

Because here’s the thing … your standards aren’t the problem. Your self-abandonment was.

You used to call it compromise. You used to shrink your truth to “keep the peace.” You used to sit there, smiling politely while your gut was screaming get the fuck out, and call it patience. You stayed where you weren’t met. You tried to build intimacy with people who were terrified of being seen. You called breadcrumbs a feast. You called anxiety “chemistry.” You called inconsistency “passion.” You even convinced yourself that their half-arsed  “love yous” were enough to keep you warm at night.

But here you are now, wanting more. Not more chaos, more clarity. Not more drama, more depth. You want someone who shows up emotionally naked, not just physically. Someone who’s wrestled with their own shadows and won’t flinch at yours. Someone who doesn’t just say “I love you” but proves it, with attention, with presence, with fucking integrity.

And yes, it’s fucking harder now. Because your old patterns aren’t driving the bus anymore. Because you’ve finally realised that being alone isn’t the worst thing, - being unseen while pretending you’re not lonely is. Because you’d rather sit in your own company than share space with someone who’s emotionally renting you by the hour.

So if you’ve been doubting yourself, if you’ve been whispering, “Maybe I am asking for too much…” No. You’re just finally done abandoning yourself. And that’s a terrifying, liberating place to stand.

The ones who can’t meet you there? Let them go. Let them roll their eyes. Let them call you “too much.” Let them scurry back to their shallow waters and Instagram quotes about “alignment,” while you sit steady in the deep, knowing that the person who can meet you there, the one who’s done the work, burned through their own bullshit, and knows how to stay, that person will recognise you the way fire recognises fire.

Because you don’t need everyone to love you. You need you to stop betraying yourself to be loved.

Homecoming 

You called it love,

but it was just fear in a nice outfit.

Now you call it loneliness,

but it’s only the sound of you

finally coming home

The Things We Don’t Want to Admit About Love (Episode 8:)

You Say You’re Healed, But You Still Chase People Who Hurt You

You’ve done the work. 

The breathwork. The journaling. The cacao-fuelled trauma release workshops where everyone’s ugly-crying on woven rugs while whispering about “safe containers.”

You’ve read all the books. Talked to your inner child. Smudged every goddamn room in your house so many times the ghosts have packed up and moved to a less intense neighbourhood.

And yet …  There you are. Again. Falling for someone who gives you the same nervous-system chaos as your emotionally unavailable parent. Not because you’re broken. But because your body still believes that love equals unpredictability. That longing equals passion. That safety equals boring. That if it doesn’t hurt, it must not be real.

This is the part you don’t want to admit.

You can post all the self-love quotes you want, but your heart still skips a beat when someone with bad boundaries and good bone structure sends you a breadcrumb at 11:47 p.m. on a Wednesday.

You say you’re healed. But you ghost the ones who actually show up. And write tortured poetry about the ones who don’t. You crave depth, but only with people who refuse to dive, because then you never have to risk being truly seen. And to be seen is to be loved. And to be loved is to risk losing it. So you’d rather chase ghosts than sit still and be held.

That’s the heartbreak. The contradiction. The loop.

You’re not weak. You’re just conditioned, to confuse pain with purpose, intensity with intimacy, drama with devotion. To think healing is a fucking finish line you can cross if you just meditate hard enough or add one more track to your “Soft But Feral” playlist.

But healing isn’t a performance. It’s choosing the boring text over the hot-and-cold mindfuck. It’s letting go of the “spark” that always turns into smoke. It’s realising the person who feels like home might only feel that way because chaos is the only home you’ve ever known.

So what now?

You stop pretending the wound is closed when it’s still bleeding. You stop blaming fate when it’s actually fear. You stop calling it a “pattern” and start calling it what it really is: a protection strategy.

You don’t heal by talking about healing. You heal when you finally stop touching what keeps cutting you.

You say you want love? … Then stop running from the people who can actually give it. And start asking yourself the question no one wants to answer:

What the hell would you even do with a love that didn’t require you to earn it?

The truth doesn’t yell, 

it whispers in your gut

when you’re texting the one

who never texts back.

The Things We Don’t Want to Admit About Love (Episode 9)

You Say You Want Honesty, But You Still Punish People For Telling You The Truth

You say you want a “real one.” Someone raw. Someone who doesn’t lie. Someone who’s emotionally available and finally fucking honest.

But the second they hand you something sharp, something that cuts through your illusions, you flinch. You retreat. You ghost. You turn their truth into a weapon and punish them for being brave enough to give it to you. You smile that tight, polite smile, mumble “thanks for your honesty,” and then start building the walls that will keep them out for good.

We love to say we want truth, but most of us don’t. We want the version of truth that makes us feel safe, that flatters the story we’ve been clinging to. The kind that lets us stay the hero or the victim, depending on which role we’ve grown comfortable in.

We say we want honesty. But what we really want is honesty that doesn’t hurt. Honesty that doesn’t shake our sense of control. Honesty that doesn’t demand we grow the fuck up. 

Because real honesty is ugly sometimes. It’s clumsy and awkward and full of sentences that land like knives: … “I still think about my ex.” … “I’m scared I’ll fuck this up.” … “I’m not sure I can give you what you need.” … “I love you, but some days I think your a cunt and I want to leave.”

And the moment those words hit the air, what do we do? We scramble for our shields. We label them toxic. We declare a red flag. We talk about how our nervous system “can’t hold that energy,” as if our hearts are fragile little things instead of wild, resilient animals that have been breaking and mending since the day we were born.

And here’s the brutal truth …  your nervous system isn’t the problem. Your conditioning is. You’ve been fed a curated version of love , brand-safe vulnerability with soft edges and Instagram quotes ,  and now the real thing feels foreign. The real thing feels dangerous.

So you punish the ones who dare to be honest, and then you wonder why everyone lies. You beg for transparency but send people running when they finally give it to you raw. You ache for intimacy but slam the fucking door the moment someone actually opens it.

The work, the messy, human, terrifying work, is to stay. To breathe through the sting and sit in the discomfort without running. To stop turning every hard truth into proof that you’re unlovable, or that they’re the villain, or that the relationship is doomed.

Because honesty isn’t the enemy. It’s the doorway. It’s the only way you ever get to a love that’s worth a fuck . The kind that says, “I’m not perfect, but I’m here. And I’d rather bleed with you than pretend I’m whole.”

If you keep asking for “real” but punishing the raw, you’re not building love. You’re building a cage, decorated with spiritual buzzwords like “alignment” and “standards” and “I don’t have space for this energy.” 

But you don’t need more space. You need more fucking courage. You need the kind of courage that lets someone hand you their messy, unpolished truth and choose to stay anyway, not because it’s easy, but because you know that’s where the real truth lives.

So next time someone hands you a truth that stings, pause. Breathe. Don’t run. Don’t react. Listen like your heart has been waiting for this moment, because maybe it has.

That’s what love looks like when it stops performing and starts being real. 

It doesn’t always feel good.

 But it will set you free.

Truth doesn’t shout.

It slips under your skin,

quiet as a prayer,

sharp as a blade.

You can ignore it,

bury it,

run from it, 

but it will sit there,

waiting,

until you’re ready

to bleed your way free.

Can we make compost of the past? 

Until the little girls inside us admit that their hands are still reaching for a door that never opened, we will keep mistaking lovers for locksmiths. We will hand our keys to anyone who promises a hallway with warm light, and then rage when the walls look like the old house. This is not a flaw; it is a map printed by survival, folded into the heart before we knew words. We learned to survive by squinting at shadows and calling them safety, by shrinking our voice to fit the room, by dressing absence in our best hope and pretending it was love. And so, grown bodies carry ancient tremors, and we keep rehearsing an ending we swore we would rewrite.

Two wounded children will call it a spark, but it is familiarity wearing perfume. The body remembers the temperature of neglect and confuses it with heat; it recognizes the rhythm of pursuit and withdrawal and calls it dance. We chase what we never caught because the chase is the only language we were taught. We idolize whoever resembles the parent who could not stay, and we punish whoever resembles the parent who stayed but could not see. We do not fall in love; we fall into memory and hope memory will finally love us back.

Bickering is often just two nervous systems yelling “Danger” through different megaphones. Criticism says, “If you would just do it my way, I would not have to be afraid.” Blame says, “Carry what is too heavy for me, so I do not drop it and lose you.” Complaining is the ghost of a need that never learned how to knock softly. Pointing and projecting are emergency exits for shame when it cannot bear the mirror. And beneath every argument about dishes, deadlines, or tone is the same soft creature asking, “Will you stay when I am not impressive?”

Breakups repeat because lessons do not graduate us; we graduate ourselves. We fall apart and swear we understand, yet the body still reaches for the familiar alarm clock. The faces change, the names change, the scenery changes, and the script survives, stubborn and intact. We keep choosing the test we failed because we have not learned how to stop taking it. So the same kind of partner arrives like a seasonal storm, and we call it fate when it is simply unhealed pattern with good timing.

Actual love does not bloom on the battlefield where our younger selves are still ducking. Actual love grows in the meadow we plant when we finally stop making our partner responsible for our weather. It arrives on the day we take our fear by the hand and say, “You may ride with me, but you may not drive.” It begins when we tell the truth about the size of our hunger and stop disguising it as control. It deepens when we learn the holy difference between comfort and caretaking, between honesty and cruelty, between boundaries and walls.

Facing the inner child is not a single ceremony; it is a daily citizenship. It is the slow practice of hearing your old panic without obeying it. It is the art of saying, “I am triggered,” and then breathing until meaning returns to the room. It is letting grief finish its sentence instead of interrupting it with a project or a punishment. It is giving yourself the tenderness you demanded from the world and never received on schedule.

Reparenting is a quiet revolution that makes a future possible where the past once made all the rules. You become the arms that never closed on you. You leave the lamp on for yourself when you are late and refuse to weaponize lateness with shame. You cook a meal for the part of you that still hoards crumbs. You promise to tell the truth to yourself first, even when it is unspectacular, even when it is heavy.

Once the child inside feels seen, you stop auditioning for roles you never wanted. You no longer hire your lover to be your rescuer and then resent them for carrying you. You no longer assign your partner the part of the villain and then confuse safety with boredom when they refuse it. You develop a taste for reliable kindness, for ordinary steadiness, for the sweet peace of not needing to perform. Your appetite shifts from fireworks to hearth fire, from spectacle to presence.

Healing does not erase history; it teaches you how to hold it without letting it hold you hostage. You still get angry, but you retire the character who yells. You still get scared, but you learn to speak fear in its first language: softness. You still get sad, but you stop turning sorrow into strategy. Apologies arrive faster than defenses. Repairs become bridges you both know how to build, plank by plank, without demanding applause.

To love as an adult is to set the table for two sovereigns, not one monarch and one subject. It is to cherish warmth without pretending it can replace clarity. It is to ask, “What do you need?” and be prepared to hear “Not you, not now,” without making it a verdict on your worth. It is to measure a relationship by how well it navigates “no,” not just how intoxicated it is by “yes.” It is to treat conflict as compost, not contamination.

We must also honor the lineage of pain that trained us. Our parents were children once, carrying bowls that were never filled. Their love was a translation, and some words were missing from the dictionary they were given. We can grieve the pages that were torn out without tearing ourselves in two. We can say, “What happened to me should not have happened,” and also, “It is mine to heal now,” and feel the spine of dignity return to our back.

Solitude becomes a sanctuary, not a sentence, when the child is no longer abandoned there. You learn to enjoy your own company without auditioning for your reflection. Silence stops sounding like danger and starts sounding like depth. You notice the soft pleasures that do not ask you to bleed for them: a room that holds your breath, a morning that does not hurry you, a routine that keeps its promises. You practice being with yourself until you are no longer a stranger at your own table.

The body must be invited home, too, because it keeps the past inside its muscles and breath. You learn the difference between a boundary and a flinch. You learn how safety feels from the inside out: a jaw that unclenches, a belly that receives air, a spine that is allowed to be tall. You stop negotiating with your nervous system by force and start negotiating by kindness. You move, you rest, you touch the earth, and slowly the alarm system believes you.

As you grow, your choosing becomes cleaner. You notice red flags not as sirens to chase but as signals to bow out. You feel the old magnet and smile at its persistence, then set it down with thanks and keep walking. You ask better questions: How do we repair? Where do we put our anger? What happens when our dreams conflict? You value capacity over charisma, character over charm, demonstration over declaration.

One day, you realize that love did not arrive because you finally convinced someone to parent you. It arrived because you learned to parent yourself so well that you could meet another adult as an equal, not as a plea. Love shows up in the ordinary: in groceries carried without scorekeeping, in truths told before they turn sour, in laughter that does not hide a blade. It is less of a rescue and more of a rhythm, less of a high and more of a home.

Until the little girls face their unmet needs and the beliefs that make their world too small, they will keep hiring partners to act in a play that always ends in the same scene. That is not failure; it is unhealed hope replaying itself. But when you sit with your child, feed them, hear them, and stay, hope grows up into trust. Then love is no longer a hospital; it is a garden where two whole people plant, weed, water, and rest. And in that garden, the past becomes compost, the present becomes breath, and the future arrives like morning: gentle, inevitable, full of light.