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Once upon a time,
love was simple in my mind.
You pick a person
and you love them.
Simple as that.

I used to move through the world
with childlike whimsy,
trusting my own magic,
believing that choosing someone
and staying
was just what people did.

Then I met the kind of love
that made me feel like I was
too much.

Too loud.
Too tender.
Too needy.
Too intense.

My heart learned to apologize
for beating as hard as it does.
I learned to read every silence
as a storm warning.
I started treating my own needs
like bad behavior.

That love broke my heart
in the way that teaches you
what your nervous system
has always known:
nothing feels safe
when you’re always waiting
to be left, or compared to others.

Grief came later—
not as a soft rain,
but as a flood.

No one told me
that grief gets worse
before it gets better,
that the body
holds on to every goodbye
until it finally trusts
it’s allowed to let go.

I shook.
I cried.
My chest ached
like it was breaking open
for the first time,
even though it had been cracking
for years.

My body was releasing
the worst of my hurts,
and I realized
I had never been with someone
who intended to stay.

I thought that was my fault.
I called it “standards”
to stay with people
who didn’t choose me fully,
but really
it was a pattern:
if they never really stay,
then I never really have to be seen.

And then—
like a plot twist
I almost didn’t believe—
I met someone new.

Someone who makes me feel
wonderful
instead of “too much.”

Someone who chooses me
every day,
in every mood,
even when my fear
tries to sabotage the moment.

At first,
it felt like a trick.

They were kind,
consistent,
available—
words I wasn’t used to
putting next to “love.”

My whole body
lit up in alarm:
Run.
Shut down.
Find a reason to doubt this.

Disorganized attachment
feels like standing
in a doorway
between past and present,
heart sprinting,
hands shaking,
wanting to be held
and wanting to disappear
at the exact same time.

I saw my entire pattern
like a movie on fast-forward:

All the times I chased
those who stayed half-in.
All the ways I confused
anxiety with attraction.
All the moments I let my heart
sit in the backseat
because safety felt
too unfamiliar.

This time,
the impulse was the same—
I wanted to run.

Because somewhere inside,
I thought
getting what I’d always asked for
had to be dangerous.
That kind of tenderness
felt too bright
for the version of me
who had lived in the dark.

But something is different now.

I know what it costs
to abandon myself.
I know how it feels
to be the one
who always walks away first,
just to avoid being left behind.

This time,
I caught myself mid-sprint.

I said to my fear:
I see you.
I know why you’re here.
You kept me alive once,
but I am not living
in “once” anymore.

I am living in “now.”
With a person who says,
“I’m here,”
and then actually stays.

So I’m learning
a new kind of childlike whimsy—
not the kind that ignores the hurt,
but the kind that walks hand-in-hand
with it.

I’m learning to:

• Stay through the discomfort.
• Breathe through the urge to bolt.
• Let love be simple
  even when my brain
  wants to complicate it.

I’m unlearning the story
that I am too much,
and relearning the truth
that I was just with people
who gave too little.

I am not the girl
who thinks love is proven
by how much pain she can survive.
I am the woman
who knows she deserves
to be chosen
in every version of herself—
messy, laughing, triggered, soft.

My grief got worse
before it got better.
My heart cracked
before it opened.
My body shook
before it softened.

But now,
I can feel it:

My story
has been rewritten.

I still want to run sometimes.
That reflex doesn’t vanish overnight.
But now I also know
I can stay.

Stay in my body.
Stay with my feelings.
Stay with the person
who stays with me.

Love, it turns out,
isn’t about finding someone
who never scares you—
it’s about finding someone
safe enough
to be scared with.

And for the first time,
I’m not running from that.
I’m not running at all.

A slow stroll. I’ve got time.

I pick this.
I pick this person.
I pick myself.

Simple as that.

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