I don’t write this for sympathy. I write it because sometimes the truth needs a place to breathe.
I am not an easy person. Not in the ways that most people hope for. I overthink every word I say and every silence that follows. I replay conversations that happened five years ago, wondering if I came across as too much or not enough. I am constantly second-guessing myself, walking on the edges of connection because closeness both comforts and terrifies me.
I have spent a lot of my life navigating a world that does not quite make sense to me. As someone who is neurodivergent, introverted, and living with cPTSD, I have become painfully aware that my brain doesn’t work the way most people expect it to. I feel everything, all at once, all the time. And it’s exhausting.There are days when my mind feels like a maze I can’t escape. Thoughts spiral. Emotions crash without warning. I feel everything at full volume, even when I am trying to seem quiet, calm, composed.
I pick up on tones, shifts, glances — things people don’t say. And it gets loud in here. So loud I can’t always hear myself over the noise. I am not easy to understand. I overthink until I collapse. I replay conversations in my head like broken, haunted records. I analyze silence, words, actions, intentions, body language, and pauses. I pick up on things no one else notices, and sometimes I misread everything anyway. I constantly question whether I’m being too much, too intense, too sensitive, or just not enough.
I live in patterns and hyper-awareness. I scan the world for safety without realizing it, because somewhere along the way, my nervous system got rewired for survival. So if I seem distant, withdrawn, or if I disappear for a while, it’s never about you. It’s my way of resetting, of remembering how to be in a world that overwhelms me more than it should.
I’ve been hurt. Not just by people, but by silence, by abandonment, by moments that should have been safe and weren’t. I’ve been shaped by trauma in ways even I don’t fully understand yet. I’ve had to be my own anchor in storms that no one saw. There are days I disappear. Not because I don’t care, but because I need to find my center again. Just to function. Just to survive my own thoughts. People say I’m distant sometimes, or cold, but what they don’t see is the storm inside, the way I freeze when I’m overwhelmed. The way I withdraw when my nervous system says, this isn’t safe, even if everything seems fine on the outside. I’ve had to be hypervigilant for so long that my body flinches at calm because calm never used to mean safe. Sometimes, the quiet is where the worst things happened.
I self-sabotage because part of me doesn’t believe I deserve good things or people. I push away before I can be pushed. I doubt if anyone would ever love me beyond surface. I test people without meaning to, just to see if they’ll stay. And when they don’t, it confirms what I already fear, that I am too much, or maybe not enough. I am wrecked but I find a certain kind of peace afer people betray me.
I walk through the world with a bleeding heart under layers of armor I never asked to wear. I have abandonment wounds that ache in silence. Triggers I can’t always explain. And grief for things I never got to fully process. So yes, I require patience. I require space to decompress. I need reassurance more than I’d like to admit. I need safe love. Gentle love. Consistent love. Because chaos feels familiar, but I’m trying so hard not to live there anymore.
But despite all of that, I love with everything I have. When I care, it’s not halfway. It’s full presence. It’s remembering little details. It’s staying when most would walk away. It’s giving you the last piece of my peace even when I’m running on empty. I will hold your hand through your darkest days even if I can’t find the light myself. I’m not low-maintenance. I require patience, gentleness, honesty.
But I will give you the most honest version of myself if you give me the space to be it. I will show up raw and real. I will tell you the truth, even if it shakes in my voice. I don’t know how to love lightly, I never have. I only know how to love in all the ways I wish I had been loved.
I am not perfect. I repeat words without intending to. I have scars that still ache, triggers I can’t always predict, and days where everything feels like too much. But I am trying. I am learning to believe that healing is possible even if it’s not linear.
I am learning that I can be messy and still be worthy. Broken and still beautiful. Hard to understand and still lovable. My heart is pure, even if it’s scarred. My intentions are real, even when my delivery is messy. I might struggle with trust, but once I give it, I am all in. I don’t know how to love halfway. I only know how to love with my whole, chaotic, cracked, but fiercely beating heart. I fight for people until I have nothing left to give.
And even when I walk away, a part of me still hopes. So if you want easy, I am not it. I won’t pretend to be. But I am real. I am honest. I am someone who feels deeply and cares relentlessly. Someone who is still learning how to live without armor, still trying to believe I am not “too much” for the right people.
So if you want real, honest, loyal, flawed, and fiercely human, then maybe, just maybe, you’ve found someone who can love you in a way most people never will.
