People usually decide who I am before I speak.
They call it confidence.
Sometimes mystery.
Sometimes distance.
I let them.
There's a strange safety in being misread.
If they think I'm unbothered, they don't ask what keeps me awake.
If they think I'm strong, they don't look too closely at how carefully I hold myself together.
I move through rooms quietly, not because I'm afraid of taking space, but because I know how loud presence can be.
I notice everything.
The way someone's shoulders drop when they feel understood.
The pause before a laugh that isn't real.
The relief in people when they realise they don't have to explain themselves around me.
I've always been good at holding space.
Too good.
What I was never taught was how to ask for it in return.
There are moments when I want someone to look at me and stay, not to fix, not to fill the silence, just to sit in it with me and understand that this is how I love.
Quietly.
Fully.
Without spectacle.
Love, for me, is not urgency.
It is attention.
It's remembering how someone takes their tea.
It's offering reassurance before it's requested.
It's choosing gentleness even when I could retreat.
And yet, I hesitate.
Because I've learned that when you give people your depth too soon,
they either drown
or ask you to become shallower.
So I wait.
Not because I'm unsure of myself—
but because I know what it costs to be fully seen,
and I am still deciding who deserves that version of me.
For now, I remain observant.
Present.
Careful with my softness.
Carrying quietly what I will one day place gently into the right hands.