I’ve spent so long learning how to hold myself together, how to stand still in a room without reaching for anyone. I called it strength, told myself needing nothing meant I couldn’t be broken by anyone again.

But then you showed up, and something shifted – subtle at first, like warmth at the edge of a cold room. And suddenly, I wasn’t as certain anymore. Suddenly, I wanted.

Wanting you feels like betrayal to everything I’ve built to survive. It’s soft and terrifying. It lives in the quietest parts of me, where I’ve buried the hunger to be seen, chosen, held.

This want isn’t loud. It doesn’t beg. It just waits – aching, silent, and scared of what it might mean to want and be left open again.