I know what it’s like to offer someone the most tender part of you, hoping they’ll see it for what it is. But instead, they glance right past it as if it holds no weight. And in that moment, you don’t just feel unseen. You feel erased.

That kind of wound isn’t loud. It lingers in the quiet moments after, when you start questioning whether your softness was ever safe in their hands to begin with. You learn that vulnerability is not always met with care.

So now, I don’t hand my heart over like that. Not because I’ve stopped feeling. But because I’ve started listening to the part of me that remembers what it cost. I still feel everything. I just feel it from a safer distance.

I stay close enough to sense the warmth but far enough to protect the parts of me that still flinch at sudden cold. It is not detachment. It is preservation.

I still believe in connection. I still believe in people. But I no longer believe that love means handing myself over without a second thought. I carry myself gently now.

Because when you’ve survived being unseen, you learn to hold your own heart the way you once wished someone else would. Carefully. Intentionally. With both hands.