09/12/2025
"She is damaged, but that word does not mean she is less. It means life has handled her roughly, not that she has nothing left to give. She is not a broken object discarded in a corner; she is a living, breathing collection of survived storms. When you look at her, you are not seeing failure, you are seeing endurance. The cracks you notice are where too much pain forced its way in, but they are also where her light still fights to come out. She does not need you to fix her; she needs you to understand that she has been fixing herself for years, alone, in silence, while everyone else only saw the surface.
She has been through more hell than she will ever describe in full. Betrayals that taught her promises are cheap. Goodbyes that came without warning. Kind words followed by cruel actions that left her doubting her own judgment. She has had to claw her way out of nights that seemed endless, holding herself together when everything in her begged to collapse. Each experience took something from her, but also left behind a sharper sense of what is real and what is pretending. That is where her edge comes from. She has learned to read tone, timing, and inconsistency like other people read headlines. She has learned that the same hands that stroke your hair can also push you away when it is no longer convenient to care.
On the outside, she looks unshakable. She knows how to carry herself, how to walk into a room and appear completely in control. She can laugh, work, smile, and make conversation while her heart is quietly bleeding. She has learned to look untouchable so no one sees where she is soft. People call her strong, independent, even cold. They have no idea that under that controlled face is a mind that never stops racing, a chest that sometimes feels too tight to breathe, and a soul that has grown tired of hoping. Her outside is armor, not a reflection of how she feels. Inside, there is a constant fight between the part of her that still wants to believe in love and the part that has sworn never to be that vulnerable again.
She thinks she is hard to love, and in some ways, she is. Not because she is selfish or careless, but because she has learned to protect herself in ways that can look harsh. Her guard is high. Her questions are many. Her trust does not come free; it must be earned slowly. She will ask you what you mean when you say you care. She will hesitate when you get too close, then pull you closer when she misses you, then push you away again when her fear gets louder than her hope. This back-and-forth will not be a game. It will be the direct result of all the times her open heart was treated like something disposable.
Her pursuit of love has cost her dearly. She has loved people who used her kindness, who took the best parts of her and walked away without looking back. She has forgiven what was never truly sorry. She has stayed when she should have left, because she believed that if she just loved hard enough, it would finally be different. Each time, she lost a little more trust in others and a little more trust in herself. Now, when love shows up at her door, she does not greet it with open arms; she looks at it with suspicion. She remembers how badly it hurt the last time she believed. She remembers the nights spent wondering what was wrong with her. She remembers promising herself, “Never again.”
This is why she requires something different. She cannot be loved lazily or half-heartedly. She needs to be loved with clarity, with patience, and with actions that match words. She needs someone who understands that reassurance is not weakness for her, it is oxygen. She needs to hear “I am here” more than once, not because she likes to be coddled, but because every person who swore they would stay eventually left, and their footsteps are still echoing in her mind. She notices when you reply slower than usual. She hears the change when your voice goes flat. Her mind fills in the blanks with every ending she has already lived through. To love her is to speak clearly, to show up consistently, and to repeat the simple truths until they finally start to sink into the deeper parts of her: You are not too much. You are not unlovable. I am not going to punish you for someone else’s sins.
You will not have an easy path with her. There will be days when loving her feels like walking through a field filled with old, buried hurts. You will step on something sharp without meaning to, and she will react as if you caused all the pain she has ever known. There will be arguments that seem bigger than the moment, because they are. Her reactions often carry the weight of every past betrayal tied to this new, present fear. You might feel accused when you are only standing in the same place someone harmful once stood. You might feel tired of proving you are different from them. But if you truly want her, you must understand that loving a heart that has been hurt this deeply means accepting that sometimes you will be standing between her and her memories, not her and you.
When the world sees her, it sees the polish she has built around herself. You will see what is underneath if you stay long enough. You will see the nights where she cannot sleep because her thoughts run in circles around every “what if” and “what if I am not enough.” You will see her face change when she talks about her past, watch her eyes look away, as if the floor is safer than your gaze. You will hear her say “it is not a big deal” about things that clearly shaped her into who she is. She will downplay her own pain out of habit, because for years she was either told she was exaggerating it or was met with silence when she dared to share it. To love her is to notice the things she rushes past, and gently let her know that you are strong enough to hear the real version.
She has a beautiful heart, even now. Maybe especially now. It has been shattered and glued back together more times than she can count, yet it still feels, still cares about others, still wants to protect, still wants to give. That is not weakness; that is extraordinary courage. She knows what it costs to open up and still she tries, even if only an inch at a time. She remembers every time she cried alone, and that is why she refuses to let others feel as unseen as she once did. She will notice when you are quiet. She will check in when you seem off. She will show up for you in ways no one ever showed up for her, because she understands pain intimately and refuses to let it spread if she can help it.
And yet, for all that goodness, she is terrified of letting anyone close enough to try to mend her completely. The idea of someone holding all her pieces in their hands is both her deepest desire and her worst fear. She longs to be held safely, to be told “You do not have to be strong all the time.” At the same time, she cannot forget how those same words have been followed by abandonment. She knows that if she lets you see everything—every crack, every fear, every memory—she is putting herself in a position where you could walk away with more of her than you found. That is the risk that keeps her guarded. She is not afraid of being alone; she is afraid of building something beautiful only to watch it shatter again.
If you choose her, you must choose all of this. You must choose the heavy moments, the unsteady beginnings, the questions that seem to come from nowhere. You must choose to stay when she says, “Maybe you would be better off without me,” because she has heard that implied in too many departures. You must choose to respond to her fear with patience, not anger. You must choose to listen more than you lecture, to understand more than you judge. You are not responsible for the damage done to her, but if you want a place in her life, you are responsible for not adding to it. Your love cannot erase her past, but it can help her build a different present, and slowly, a different future.
In return, if she lets you in, you will receive a love that is rare. You will be loved by someone who has studied pain and still chooses tenderness. Someone who does not take your effort for granted because she knows what it is like when no one bothers. Someone who will stand beside you on your bad days without flinching, because she has survived her own. Her affection will be thoughtful, deliberate, deep. She will remember the things you mention in passing. She will notice what steadies you when you are restless. She will not run when life is heavy, because heavy is familiar to her. She will see every flaw you point out in yourself and not be afraid, because she has long made peace with living imperfectly.
She is damaged, but she is not defeated. There is a difference. The world has hurt her, but it has not emptied her. If you only want something easy, she is not for you. If you only want love that stays on the surface, do not touch her heart. But if you want something real—raw, demanding, honest—then stand beside her, even when she doubts you. Speak gently to the parts of her that shake. Show her, with patient presence rather than loud promises, that she was wrong about being unlovable. Help her see that even in pieces, she is still worth choosing. Because the deepest truth is this: she is not hard to love, she is hard to hurt. And if you can understand that difference, you will see what she has never fully believed about herself—that she is, and always has been, worth every moment of effort it takes to love her right."
-Steve De'lano Garcia
