i hope you meet someone who doesn’t ask you to be fine.
someone who knows grief doesn’t disappear just because you’ve gotten tired of carrying it.
someone who understands that some hurt doesn’t look dramatic. it just sits there. quietly. stubbornly. like it has nowhere else to go.
i hope they don’t try to fix you.
i hope they don’t rush past the parts of you that are hard to hold.
the anger. the fear. the days where everything feels too loud.
the nights where even your own mind sounds cruel.
i hope they stay anyway.
not because it is beautiful.
not because it makes for a good story.
just because they mean it.
i hope they can stand in the middle of your mess without making it into a lesson.
when the laundry is everywhere.
when the dishes have been sitting too long.
when you haven’t been kind to yourself in days.
when you are trying, and still falling apart a little.
i hope they see the parts of you you’ve learned to call ugly.
the parts you hide before anyone can get close enough to notice.
and i hope they don’t flinch.
i hope they don’t turn away.
i hope they look at all of it and still decide you are worth staying for.
not in a dramatic way.
not in the way people write about love when they want it to sound cinematic.
just in the ordinary, difficult, unglamorous way real love happens.
in patience.
in repetition.
in showing up again the next day.
and maybe, after a while, you stop naming those parts of yourself like they are failures.
maybe you start to understand that being wounded never made you unworthy.
maybe you learn that love was never supposed to arrive only after you became easier.
maybe the right person doesn’t teach you how to hide the hurt better.
maybe they teach you that you were never too much to begin with.