Hard to Deal With

I'm mature enough now to say it out loud: I can be hard to deal with sometimes, not because I want to be, but because life taught me lessons I never asked for, and I carry them in the way I flinch, the way I brace, the way I sometimes push before I can be pushed away first.

I know I can be too much and not enough in the same breath, guarded when I should be open, distant when I should lean in, defensive when no one's even attacking.

I didn't choose to be this way. Somewhere along the way, something taught my nervous system that safety is a myth, that people leave, that trust is a door better left closed than opened and slammed shut again.

I'm not asking to be excused, just understood, there's a difference between an excuse and an explanation, between avoiding accountability and knowing exactly where the wound is so I can finally start tending to it.

I'm working on it. Slowly. Unlearning the reflexes that once protected me but now just push away the people who are actually safe, who aren't the ones who hurt me, who don't deserve the walls built for someone else.

I can be hard to love sometimes. I know this. I feel it in the moments I go quiet when I should speak, in the moments I speak too sharp when I should stay quiet.

But I'm trying. I see it now. I'm not who I was when the wounds were fresh, and I won't be who I am today forever either.

Healing isn't becoming easy. It's becoming aware, becoming honest, becoming someone who says “I know this about myself” instead of pretending the hard edges were never there at all.