"You are so tender & sweet."

A 6-word love letter to my insecurities.

April 12, 2023

There is something so strange & so lovely about existing so publicly here.

There's something so strange & so lovely about coexisting, too.

There's something so strange & so lovely about noticing the way attention can flow in different directions.

I want to cradle my tender heart.

Photo by David Boca on Unsplash

I want to talk about themes I'm noticing rather than specifics.

I want to talk about experiences I'm alchemising because it helps me to anchor any shifts.

I want to talk about the little-big pull within me that wants to be friends with everyone.

I want to talk about little-big reminders of my earliest memories: being rejected, an outcast, unwanted & misunderstood-- or perhaps just feeling this way. Either way, I hold these memories in my body, and I notice how much discussions of in-group & outgroup politics activate me.

I want to use words carefully.

When I speak about activation, I'm speaking about a state of being where I’m on edge & jarred. Hypervigilant. Crumbling. Sad. Caught between fight & flight. The slow freeze. In these moments, it feels good to breathe. It's what I need.

That, and a hug.

Power is not synonymous with invincibility.

Or rather: power is not synonymous with insensitivity.

I am a sensitive soul.

I am human, like everyone else.

I enjoy expressing myself.

The purest expression is the present moment.

Everything else is a story.

Right now, I want to cradle myself.

I want to tell myself what a great job I'm doing.
I want to hold myself like a big baby.
And I want to be held.

I yearn simply to be held.

There's a softness to all of this.

Sometimes I wonder whether, if you saw my softness, you'd be able to hold it.

I want you to be able to see me-as-me, not your projections.

I know we are mirrors, and... the game continues.

I am still grieving a wound associated with my “big personality”.

I took up too much space because I learned to speak.

I was a force of nature & a force for love before I ever claimed myself as such.

The difference was that I was bitterly unhappy.

We are all soft & hard at the same time.

We have all loved & lost.

We all know pain.

We all know what it’s like to hide-- or be afraid of-- who really are.

And, of course, we all know what it’s like to judge.

---

This started off as a love letter to my insecurities, but it's become so much deeper.

What do I want right now?

Simply to know that I am seen.
Simply to know that I am loved.
Simply to know that I am safe.

If it feels good for you: gentle messages of appreciation & love.

I also want to know what I--what this--mean/s to you. How this touches you. What this evokes in you. I desire kindness & gentleness. I desire to be able to be as soft & sad as I am Everything Else. I desire to be able to be that way without it becoming something other to itself.

It isn't [just] that I want to control my own narrative; it's that I want this [expression] not to be distorted.

I want there to be an energetic cleanliness to it.

I want to model what it’s like to live with your heart open.

I feel deeply & I feel everything.

I have no regrets.