By the time I was old enough to ask for love, I already believed I had to earn it. I didn’t think love was something given freely. I thought it had requirements. Conditions. Performances. I thought it looked like silence when I needed comfort, praise when I didn’t make mistakes, distance when I showed too much.

I didn’t ask for love. I tried to become lovable.

I learned to read faces before I could finish sentences. I measured my worth in how easy I was to manage, how little I needed, how quickly I could fix things that were never mine to fix. And when I finally found the language to ask for what I had always deserved, I did it like an apology.

Healing has meant telling the younger version of me that love doesn’t have to be earned. That her softness wasn’t a weakness. That just because no one showed her how to be held doesn’t mean she wasn’t worth holding.