I had a rough night.

Not the kind where you just don't sleep well. Not the restless tossing and turning that comes from too much caffeine, a racing mind, or a body that refuses to settle.

I mean grief.

The deep kind.

The kind that comes from somewhere underneath language.

I laid in my bed and cried. And cried. And fucking cried.

I've cried over this man before.

I've cried because I missed him. Because I loved him. Because I was angry with him. Because I couldn't understand him. Because I understood him too fucking well. Because something had happened between us that I desperately wanted to repair. Because I wanted him to understand what he had done. Because I wanted him to understand what I had done. Because I wanted us to stop hurting each other long enough to figure out how the hell two people who had shared so much love could create so much pain.

But this grief was different.

This wasn't the desperate grief that needed somebody to come fix it.

I wasn't lying there waiting for an apology.

I wasn't rehearsing the perfect thing I could say that might finally make him understand.

I wasn't planning the next conversation.

I wasn't trying to figure out which therapeutic concept might explain what had happened.

I wasn't waiting for the phone to light up.

In fact, somewhere along the way, I realized something even sadder.

I wasn't expecting much from him anymore.

And there is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with that realization.

Because there was once a woman who expected so fucking much.

Not perfection.

Not some fairytale prince who would rescue her from her life.

Not a man without wounds, triggers, flaws, fears or history.

She expected partnership.

She expected two adults who loved each other enough to keep learning how to do this better.

She expected honesty.

Transparency.

Assertive communication.

Teamwork.

Responsibility.

Repair.

She expected that when either of them fucked up—and they inevitably would—they would eventually be able to sit across from each other and say:

This belongs to me.

She believed that two people could look honestly at themselves, own the shit they brought into the room, stop handing each other their childhood wounds like weapons and slowly build something healthier than what either of them had been taught.

And maybe that's what hurt so fucking badly last night.

I thought we were building.

For a very long time, I believed that was what all this work was for.

The conversations.

The explaining.

The forgiving.

The waiting.

The second chances.

The thousandth chances.

The compassion.

The understanding.

The fucking doctoral dissertations I could apparently deliver on why somebody's behavior was hurting me while simultaneously explaining to myself all the reasons their behavior made sense.

I thought we were struggling because building something healthy is hard.

And it is hard.

Especially when neither person was handed a particularly healthy blueprint.

But lying there last night, another possibility broke through.

One I don't think I had ever allowed myself to fully see.

What if I wasn't exhausted because the road was difficult?

What if I was exhausted because I had been carrying too much of the fucking journey?

I Needed a Man. Not a Student.

I have loved a man whose wounded little boy can become very present when he feels threatened.

I know that little boy exists.

I've seen more than glimpses of him.

I've heard his history.

I've watched what happens when he feels rejected, criticized, frightened, ashamed, abandoned or misunderstood.

And because of who I am—because of my education, my profession, my own trauma history, my capacity to see underneath behavior, and probably because of some of my own deeply embedded survival adaptations—I can understand an extraordinary amount.

Sometimes too much.

I can see the child underneath the adult behavior.

I can understand why someone runs.

Why someone shuts down.

Why someone lashes out.

Why someone pursues.

Why someone becomes defensive.

Why someone tries to sweet-talk their way back into connection rather than sitting in the unbearable heat of what actually happened.

Why somebody might learn very early that love is conditional.

Why accountability might feel like annihilation instead of an invitation to grow.

Why being told, You hurt me, might somehow become translated internally into, You are bad. You are unlovable. You are about to be abandoned.

I understand all of that.

And understanding it has probably kept me in places much longer than anger ever could.

Because once you can see the wound underneath somebody's behavior, it becomes incredibly tempting to keep making accommodations for the wound.

But eventually I had to ask myself a different question.

When the fuck did understanding someone's wounded child make me responsible for raising him?

When did I take on a student?

A mentee?

A foster child who runs?

When did loving a grown man somehow become an unpaid internship in teaching another adult how to communicate, repair, regulate, follow through, take responsibility and remain in the fucking room when things get uncomfortable?

And here's the part I have to own too:

Nobody officially assigned me that job.

I stepped into it.

Sometimes lovingly.

Sometimes automatically.

Sometimes because I genuinely believed I was helping.

Sometimes because teaching and understanding are two of the things I do exceptionally well.

And sometimes, I suspect, because the alternative was terrifying.

If I stopped teaching...

If I stopped explaining...

If I stopped planning...

If I stopped initiating...

If I stopped repairing...

If I stopped translating everybody's behavior into something understandable...

what would happen to the relationship?

That question hurts.

Because I'm beginning to understand how many relationships throughout my life may have survived, at least in part, because I was willing to work so fucking hard to keep them alive.

And somewhere inside that realization is a distinction I desperately needed.

There may be a wounded little boy inside a grown man.

But the little boy does not own the vehicle.

The adult does.

His childhood matters.

His wounds matter.

His history matters.

His triggers matter.

His limitations in any given moment matter.

But none of those things transfer ownership of his adult work to me.

The 41-year-old owns the vehicle.

He decides who gets the keys.

And I cannot keep sitting in the passenger seat trying to grab the fucking steering wheel every time the wounded child appears to be taking us toward another cliff.

That isn't partnership.

And it isn't particularly loving to either of us.

Because every time I become the teacher, he gets to remain the student.

Every time I become the mother, there is no room for him to stand beside me as the man.

Every time I take responsibility for keeping the relationship functioning, I make it harder to see whether there are actually two adults choosing to build it.

And that's what I need.

Not a perfect man.

Not a finished man.

Not some mythical, fully healed man who meditates at sunrise, communicates exclusively in emotionally intelligent “I” statements and has transcended every childhood wound before breakfast.

For fuck's sake.

I am not that woman either.

I still have shadows.

I still get triggered and activated.

I still have moments when my inner Bull grabs the microphone and has some fucking things to say.

I still catastrophize sometimes.

I still want reassurance.

I still catch myself mind-reading.

I still want to chase an answer when uncertainty feels unbearable.

I still discover pieces of myself that apparently missed the memo that we've been doing this healing shit for years.

I am human.

So is he.

I don't need perfection.

I need another adult who is willing to become.

Someone willing to notice himself.

Someone willing to hear impact without immediately making intention the defense.

Someone willing to stay in difficult conversations without threatening the relationship every time the emotional temperature rises.

Someone willing to say, I fucked that up.

Someone willing to learn what he doesn't know.

Someone willing to practice what doesn't come naturally.

Someone who understands that having my back is not something you say.

It's something you repeatedly do.

Someone who doesn't blame another human being for the choices that belong to him.

Someone willing to bring his fucking tools to the construction site.

Because I am beginning to understand something I wish I had understood much sooner:

You cannot build an adult relationship around another person's potential.

Potential matters.

Capacity matters.

I believe deeply in the human capacity for change.

I've built much of my life's work around it.

But capacity is human potential.

Commitment to change becomes observable through behavior.

And another person's capacity does not obligate me to wait indefinitely for them to decide what they are willing to do with it.

That isn't giving up on another human being.

It may simply be giving their agency back to them.

His becoming belongs to him.

And mine belongs to me.

And Then I Saw Her

Somewhere underneath all of this last night, she came to me.

The little girl.

Except this time she wasn't alone.

It felt as though she had brought everybody with her. 

Every version of me who had learned a different job in order to survive connection.

The people pleaser.

The fawner.

The rescuer.

The caretaker.

The enabler.

The peacekeeper.

The persecutor.

The organizer.

The planner.

The teacher.

The fucking family chef.

The woman who could understand everybody.

The woman who could forgive almost anything once she understood where it came from.

The woman who learned to keep things moving.

The woman who learned that sometimes having a voice wasn't worth the conflict that followed using it.

The woman who had learned, in more ways than I care to recount here, that being seen wasn't always safe.

And yes, even the woman whose body sometimes became another place for lost souls wearing men's bodies to land because some wounded part of her still believed words were promises.

Because she meant what she said.

She followed through.

She took responsibility.

She showed up.

And somewhere along the way, that little girl made one of the most dangerous assumptions a child can carry into adulthood:

She assumed other people would operate the way she did.

But last night she wasn't asking me to explain anybody else.

She wasn't asking me to diagnose the relationship.

She wasn't asking me whether he loved me.

She wasn't asking whether I should stay or go.

She showed me something else.

She showed me how fucking tired she was.

Tired of carrying the torch.

Tired of organizing.

Tired of anticipating.

Tired of making sure everybody had what they needed.

Tired of being the responsible one.

Tired of surviving.

And then I remembered something that makes the metaphor I have been using for years feel almost painfully literal.

That little girl knows exactly what it means to live on breadcrumbs.

Because before breadcrumbs became a metaphor for love—

sometimes they were fucking food.

I Made a Fucking Feast

I grew up knowing lack.

Not metaphorical lack.

Not the kind of scarcity people talk about after reading a book about abundance mindset.

Actual fucking poverty.

The kind that teaches a child things about survival long before she has words like scarcity, resourcefulness or adaptation.

You learn to make things stretch.

You learn not to waste.

You learn to take what is available.

You learn that wanting something doesn't mean you're going to get it.

You learn there might not be more.

And somewhere inside all of that, you can become incredibly resourceful.

I did.

I learned how to make something out of almost nothing.

That's a useful skill when there is actually almost nothing.

It can keep you alive.

It can make you creative.

It can make you resilient.

It can teach you how to look at what is available instead of collapsing over what isn't.

But survival skills are interesting little fuckers.

Sometimes they don't recognize when the emergency is over.

Sometimes they quietly follow you into adulthood, change clothes, learn some sophisticated language and start participating in parts of your life where you don't realize they're still running the show.

And I am beginning to wonder how many times I carried scarcity into love.

How many times did some part of me still believe:

Take what's available.

Make it stretch.

Don't waste it.

Don't ask for too much.

Be grateful there is something.

There might not be more.

Because that little girl became a woman who could make a tremendous amount out of very fucking little.

Give me a moment of tenderness and I could remember it for months.

Give me a beautiful night and I could hold onto it through weeks of disconnection.

Give me a promise and I could start building around the possibility of its fulfillment.

Give me a glimpse of accountability and I could imagine what might happen if we just kept working.

Give me a pair of arms where my body could finally soften and I could remember exactly how safe they once felt while trying to understand why everything felt so unsafe now.

Make me a fucking bagel and somehow it could mean far more than a bagel.

Because it was never really about the bagel.

It was:

Somebody thought about me.

Somebody noticed I needed something.

Somebody made something for me.

Somebody brought it to me.

For one tiny moment, I wasn't the person making sure everybody else was fed.

I was being cared for.

And those moments mattered.

I don't need to rewrite them as fake simply because the larger relationship has hurt me.

I don't need to erase every tender memory to justify acknowledging everything that wasn't working.

Something can be meaningful and still not be enough.

A breadcrumb is still food.

But a human being cannot live on breadcrumbs forever.

And perhaps that is one of the hardest things I've had to admit.

I had become so fucking good at making a feast out of them.

A little affection.

A little reassurance.

A little consistency.

A promise.

A good conversation.

A beautiful night.

A moment of vulnerability.

A date.

A hug.

An I love you.

A glimpse of the person I believed someone could become.

And then I would do what I had been doing since childhood.

I would make it stretch.

I would add understanding.

I would add patience.

I would add compassion.

I would add forgiveness.

I would add explanations.

I would add planning.

I would add money when there wasn't enough.

I would add emotional labor.

I would add another chance.

And another.

And another.

I would add everything I knew about trauma, attachment, addiction, relationships, human behavior and healing.

I would add hope.

And then I would stand back looking at this enormous fucking meal and somehow forget to ask:

Who brought the ingredients?

That's a painful question.

Because this isn't about keeping score.

Healthy relationships aren't spreadsheets where every act of kindness gets entered into the appropriate column so we can determine who owes whom seventeen dollars and an apology.

Life doesn't work that way.

People get sick.

People struggle.

People lose jobs.

People experience trauma.

One person carries more for a while.

Then maybe the other one does.

There are seasons when that balancing act is impossible.

Reciprocity isn't sameness.

But there is a difference between temporarily carrying more weight for somebody you love and slowly discovering that your extraordinary ability to carry weight has become part of the relationship's fucking infrastructure.

Because when I can always make something out of nothing, something interesting happens.

If I plan it, something happens.

If I organize it, it gets done.

If I initiate the conversation, maybe we talk.

If I explain the rupture thoroughly enough, maybe it becomes understandable.

If I initiate repair, maybe connection returns.

If I forgive, maybe we move forward.

If I pay, the immediate problem disappears.

If I cook, everybody eats.

If I anticipate, nobody has to ask.

If I accommodate, conflict decreases.

If I understand why somebody did something hurtful, maybe I can tolerate the hurt a little longer.

If I keep believing in someone's potential, maybe I can survive another disappointment.

And because I am capable of doing all of those things, from the outside it can look like there was enough.

There wasn't always enough.

I made it enough.

Fuck.

There is grief in writing that.

Because resourcefulness is something I love about myself.

I don't want to lose it.

I don't want this awakening to turn me into somebody who stops giving, stops loving, stops understanding or starts measuring every relationship by what I get back.

That's not who I want to become.

But I am learning that one of my greatest strengths can become one of my greatest vulnerabilities when I use it to compensate indefinitely for what another adult is unwilling to carry.

My ability to create abundance does not prove that abundance was being offered to me.

Sometimes it only proves that I know how to survive scarcity.

And maybe that is why something inside me finally screamed something recently that was much bigger than the moment in which I said it:

What about me?

What the fuck about me?

Not:

Who's going to rescue me?

Not:

Who's going to become responsible for my life?

Not:

Who's going to feed me because I'm incapable of feeding myself?

I've been proving my ability to take care of myself for most of my fucking life.

The question underneath it was much older.

Who notices whether I have enough?

Who notices when I'm tired?

Who thinks about what I might need?

Who follows through when they tell me they'll handle something?

Who carries something because they said they would carry it?

Who sees the woman who has spent so much of her life making sure everybody else is okay and says:

I've got this one.

And then actually fucking has it.

Because maybe what I've wanted all along wasn't somebody to take responsibility for me.

Maybe I've simply wanted to finally experience a relationship with another adult who takes responsibility with me.

Someone who brings ingredients to the table.

Someone who knows how to cook beside me.

Someone willing to learn when they don't.

Someone who doesn't arrive hungry, sit down, eat what I've prepared, tell me how much they love the meal and then wonder why the fuck I'm exhausted.

And I can feel the little girl in me understanding something she could never have known then.

Something is not always better than nothing.

Sometimes something keeps you alive.

And sometimes something keeps you starving just slowly enough that you convince yourself you're being fed.

There is a difference.

That little girl had to survive on what was available.

I don't.

She had to make the breadcrumbs last.

I don't.

She had to become extraordinarily good at creating something out of almost nothing.

And I love her for it.

She fucking survived.

But she doesn't have to run the kitchen anymore.

I do.

And I am finally allowed to look at the table and decide:

This is not enough for me.

Not because I'm ungrateful.

Not because I expect perfection.

Not because everything that was offered was meaningless.

Not because I am better than the person sitting across from me.

But because I finally understand that knowing how to survive on very little is not the same thing as being required to do it for the rest of my fucking life.

I don't want to survive love anymore.

I want to live inside it.

But What the Fuck Is Love?

That's a complicated sentence to write.

I want to live inside love.

Because the more I've examined my relationships, my childhood, my attachment patterns, my own behaviors and the behaviors of people I have loved, the less willing I am to casually label everything that happens between two attached human beings as love.

We use that word for a lot of shit.

Sometimes I think we use it because we don't have better language for the enormous mixture of things happening inside us.

Attachment.

Desire.

Fear.

Sex.

Comfort.

Familiarity.

Dependency.

Possession.

Caretaking.

Longing.

Habit.

Need.

Safety.

Control.

Connection.

Abandonment terror.

The desperate need to restore equilibrium when someone we are attached to starts pulling away.

And somewhere inside that complicated human soup, there may also be genuine fucking love.

But those things are not interchangeable.

And I think that's something I've had to learn the hard way.

Someone pursuing you doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone being terrified of losing you doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone crying when you leave doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone buying you something doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone wanting your body doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone needing your reassurance doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone being unable to tolerate your absence doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

Someone coming back over and over again doesn't necessarily mean they love you.

And perhaps even more uncomfortably:

Doing all of those things for someone else doesn't necessarily mean every part of what you're doing is love either.

Fuck.

Because that means I have to look at myself too.

How much of my giving was love?

How much was caretaking?

How much of my understanding was compassion?

How much was fear?

How much of my forgiveness was genuinely chosen?

How much was the little girl desperately trying to keep connection alive?

How much of my explaining was healthy communication?

And how much was me believing that if I could finally find the perfect combination of words, somebody would understand me enough to stop hurting me?

How much of my waiting was commitment?

And how much was scarcity whispering:

Don't throw this away. There might not be more.

Those aren't comfortable questions.

But I don't want comfortable answers.

I want true ones.

And sometimes the truest answer is:

I don't fucking know.

I cannot crawl inside another human being and determine exactly what internal process created every behavior.

Neither can they do that to me.

Human beings are rarely that clean.

We can love and fear simultaneously.

We can care and still behave selfishly.

We can be attached and genuinely love.

We can love someone and try to control them.

We can love someone and run from them.

We can love someone and hurt them.

We can love someone and fail them.

We can love someone and still be completely unequipped to build a healthy relationship with them.

And sometimes we can repeat a behavior so many times that we call it love simply because that's what love looked like where we came from.

That's the part that fascinates me now.

How much of what human beings call love is actually auto-repeat?

Mom withdraws, so the child pursues.

Dad becomes angry, so the child disappears.

Someone is upset, so we appease.

Connection feels threatened, so we cling.

Conflict appears, so we run.

Someone says no, and an old wound hears rejection.

Someone asks for accountability, and shame hears condemnation.

Someone begins pulling away, and suddenly we become extraordinarily attentive.

Someone becomes emotionally unavailable, and suddenly we need them more.

Someone hurts, and we rush to fix it—not necessarily because we can tolerate their pain, but because we cannot tolerate what their pain activates inside us.

Then we grow up.

We put adult clothes on those patterns.

We develop sophisticated vocabularies.

We have jobs.

Children.

Mortgages.

Degrees.

Businesses.

Relationships.

We learn to say I love you.

But sometimes there is still a wounded child somewhere inside pressing fucking auto-repeat.

That doesn't make us bad.

It makes us human.

But being human doesn't remove responsibility.

Eventually, if we become conscious enough to see the pattern, we have a choice about whether we continue participating in it.

And that applies to me every bit as much as it applies to anyone I've ever loved.

My Love Can Be Unconditional. My Participation Cannot.

There is one thing I do know.

I love this man.

I don't need the relationship to work in order to make that statement true.

I don't need him to behave differently today to prove what I feel.

I don't need to turn him into a monster so I can justify protecting myself.

I don't need to convince myself that every beautiful thing between us was fake.

And I don't need to stop loving him before I'm allowed to decide that something is hurting me.

That may be one of the most important distinctions I have ever learned.

Because somewhere along the way, I think many of us learned that leaving, separating, setting limits or withdrawing participation must mean love has ended.

Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe sometimes love remains while participation changes.

Maybe I can love someone unconditionally and refuse to live with them conditionlessly.

Because unconditional love is not unlimited access.

It is not unlimited chances.

It is not unlimited money.

It is not unlimited emotional labor.

It is not unlimited forgiveness without repair.

It is not unlimited tolerance.

It is not unlimited waiting.

It is not surrendering my body.

It is not surrendering my home.

It is not surrendering my voice.

It is not making somebody else's responsibilities mine.

It is not allowing another person's wounds to repeatedly wound me because I understand where those wounds came from.

Understanding why does not create consent.

And understanding why does not require participation.

I can understand why someone runs and still refuse to chase them.

I can understand why someone becomes defensive and still require respectful communication.

I can understand why accountability activates shame and still expect another adult to take responsibility for what belongs to them.

I can understand why someone's childhood makes receiving a boundary incredibly difficult and still fucking have one.

I can understand addiction and refuse to fund it.

I can understand scarcity and refuse to be depleted by it.

I can understand trauma and refuse to become collateral damage to somebody else's refusal to work with theirs.

That isn't punishment.

It isn't abandonment.

It isn't me declaring myself more evolved than another human being.

It's differentiation.

Your work belongs to you.

My work belongs to me.

I can support your work.

I cannot become your work.

And I cannot do your work for you.

For a long time, I think I believed that loving someone deeply meant being willing to stay beside them while they figured things out.

There is something beautiful about that.

Human beings need grace.

We need people who don't discard us the first time our wounds become inconvenient.

We need room to fuck up.

We need forgiveness.

We need opportunities to practice something differently.

We need relationships where imperfection doesn't automatically mean exile.

I still believe all of that.

But there is a difference between being beside someone actively doing the work and doing the work while waiting for them to decide whether they are going to participate.

There is a difference between supporting someone and carrying them.

There is a difference between patience and indefinite waiting.

There is a difference between compassion and exemption.

There is a difference between forgiveness and repeatedly returning everyone to the exact conditions that created the injury.

There is a difference between knowing someone has the capacity to change and seeing them consistently choose the behaviors required to create that change.

And there is a difference between someone wanting the outcome of a healthy relationship and being willing to tolerate the discomfort required to build one.

That last one hurts.

Because I think sometimes we both wanted the outcome.

Peace.

Love.

Safety.

Home.

Connection.

Sex.

Laughter.

Companionship.

The feeling of being held.

The feeling of having someone.

The beautiful fucking parts.

But healthy relationships aren't built only from the parts that feel good.

They're built in what happens after someone gets hurt.

They're built in whether we can tolerate hearing something we don't want to hear.

They're built in whether I'm sorry becomes different behavior.

They're built in whether someone's no can remain a no without making them the enemy.

They're built in whether promises mean something when keeping them becomes inconvenient.

They're built in whether two people can remain two separate human beings without interpreting difference as rejection.

They're built in the boring shit.

Money.

Groceries.

Plans.

Promises.

Boundaries.

Dishes.

Transportation.

Follow-through.

Who carries what.

Who notices.

Who asks.

Who repairs.

Who comes back.

Who takes responsibility.

Who fucking shows up.

And that's when I started asking myself a different question.

Not:

Does he love me?

Not even:

Do I love him?

I already know my answer to the second one.

The question became:

Whatever someone calls what they feel for me, what does the relationship created by our behavior actually feel like to live inside?

Because love may be unconditional.

Relationships are not.

Relationships require conditions.

Not conditions for someone's worth.

Conditions for healthy participation.

Honesty.

Consent.

Respect.

Reciprocity.

Safety.

Accountability.

Communication.

Repair.

Reliability.

Shared responsibility.

The willingness to look at ourselves.

The willingness to become.

And perhaps I spent far too much time trying to determine whether enough love existed between us to save the relationship.

When maybe the more important question was whether there were two people consistently willing to build one.

I Thought We Were Building

That's the part that broke something open in me last night.

I wasn't lying there grieving because love is hard.

I know love can be hard at times, shit this isn't a "Disney Fairy Tale" so a happy ending isn't guaranteed.

I wasn't grieving because another human being had wounds.

So do I.

I wasn't grieving because somebody disappointed me.

People disappoint each other.

I wasn't grieving because the relationship wasn't perfect.

I have never needed perfect.

I was grieving because I thought we were building.

I thought the conversations were construction.

I thought the explanations were construction.

I thought the second chances were construction.

I thought the waiting was construction.

I thought the forgiveness was construction.

I thought seeing the wounded child underneath the behavior was helping us build something the adults had never been given.

I thought we were learning.

I thought we were growing.

I thought we were moving somewhere.

Together.

And somewhere in the darkness last night came the realization I did not fucking want:

What if I had mistaken my willingness to keep building for evidence that there were two builders?

That one hurt.

Because suddenly I could see more than this relationship.

I could see relationships across my life.

Different people.

Different circumstances.

Different kinds of love.

And there I fucking was.

Explaining.

Organizing.

Initiating.

Repairing.

Forgiving.

Waiting.

Holding.

Planning.

Feeding.

Trying.

Trying harder.

Trying differently.

Trying again.

Keeping relationships alive because losing them felt more frightening than admitting how much work it took to keep them breathing.

And suddenly the grief wasn't only about a man.

It was for every version of me who thought:

If I just keep building, eventually somebody will notice we're supposed to be doing this together.

Maybe that's why I'm so tired.

Maybe I wasn't exhausted because I was incapable of love.

Maybe I wasn't exhausted because relationships are inherently exhausting.

Maybe I was exhausted because I kept trying to build two-person structures with one person's fucking labor.

And I need to be careful here.

That does not mean nobody ever contributed.

It doesn't erase what another person gave.

It doesn't erase tenderness.

It doesn't erase help.

It doesn't erase laughter, affection, sex, companionship, generosity or moments of genuine connection.

It doesn't mean I was some perfect martyr dragging useless human beings behind me.

That's another story, and it isn't true either.

I contributed to these dynamics.

I over-functioned.

I stepped into jobs that weren't mine.

I explained when perhaps I needed to stop explaining.

I rescued.

I enabled.

I chased repair.

I sometimes tried to teach when another adult had not asked for a fucking lesson.

I sometimes confused understanding someone's behavior with needing to continue tolerating it.

I sometimes kept relationships alive past the point where I should have stopped and simply observed:

What happens if I put my tools down?

That's accountability.

Not blame.

Because another person's failure to carry their responsibility is theirs.

My decision to repeatedly pick it up is mine.

And I can change mine.

Maybe that's the beginning of something entirely different.

Maybe I don't have to burn down the construction site.

Maybe I don't have to scream until somebody picks up a hammer.

Maybe I don't have to convince another human being that the house is worth building.

Maybe I simply put down the tools that were never mine to carry...

and look around.

Are there actually two fucking builders here?

The Home I Spent My Childhood Waiting For

That question brings me back to something I realized recently that still takes my breath away when I really let myself feel it.

I created the fucking home I spent my childhood waiting for.

Not the house.

Not the furniture.

Not the address.

The home.

The place where the little girl doesn't have to wonder which adult is going to show up.

The place where somebody notices what needs done and does it.

The place where the bills get handled.

The food gets bought.

The appointments get made.

The problems get solved.

The people I love get cared for.

The promises I make mean something to me.

And when I fuck up, I don't have to pretend I didn't.

I can own it.

Repair it.

Learn from it.

Try differently.

For most of my childhood, I kept waiting for the responsible adults to become responsible.

Waiting for somebody to come home.

Waiting for somebody to notice.

Waiting for somebody to do what they said they were going to do.

Waiting for somebody else to carry what never should have belonged to a child in the first fucking place.

When are they coming home?

When will I feel safe?

When can I stop playing Mommy and Daddy for Mommy and Daddy?

That little girl wasn't asking somebody to help her carry her responsibilities.

She was carrying theirs.

There is a difference.

And I think I have spent much of my adult life reenacting some version of that question.

When are you going to show up?

When are you going to do what you said?

When are you going to take care of the thing you promised you would take care of?

When are you going to initiate the conversation?

When are you going to repair what you broke?

When are you going to notice that I'm fucking tired?

When can I stop carrying this?

When do I get to rest?

Different people.

Different relationships.

Different circumstances.

Same fucking waiting room.

And that's when another realization hit me:

Even when I'm not waiting, I'm waiting.

I can work.

I can build businesses.

I can raise children.

I can help people.

I can study.

I can write.

I can clean the house.

I can solve problems.

I can make dinner.

I can make money.

I can create something beautiful.

I can build an entire fucking life.

And somewhere underneath all of it, some part of me can still be standing at that window asking:

Are you coming?

Jesus.

I don't want to live there anymore.

The Little Girl Doesn't Have to Run the Fucking House

Something happened recently when I was trying to regulate myself before a difficult conversation.

I went inward.

I found her.

And instead of asking her what she thought I should do, I told her something.

Honey, you don't need to worry about adult issues.

I've got this.

I've got us.

I am in charge.

I will keep you safe.

Leave adult matters for adults.

And something about those words landed differently.

Because healing was never supposed to mean making the little girl disappear.

Maybe it wasn't about getting so psychologically sophisticated that she never gets scared again.

Maybe it wasn't about regulating her into silence.

Maybe healing meant finally giving her what she should have had all along:

an adult who stays.

Me.

For the first time, she doesn't have to run the fucking house.

She doesn't have to figure out whether someone is lying.

She doesn't have to convince somebody to love us.

She doesn't have to make a relationship work.

She doesn't have to monitor anybody's mood.

She doesn't have to rescue anybody.

She doesn't have to decide whether someone gets another chance.

She doesn't have to interpret somebody's childhood.

She doesn't have to figure out what another person's silence means.

She doesn't have to make herself useful enough to keep someone around.

She doesn't have to fuck anyone to feel chosen.

She doesn't have to make the breadcrumbs stretch.

She doesn't have to cook the fucking feast.

She gets to be a child.

And Adult Catherine gets to decide what happens next.

That doesn't mean Adult Catherine always gets it right.

Fuck no.

Sometimes I still hear the old voices.

Sometimes Caretaker Cathy is already halfway through fixing something before I realize she picked the fucking clipboard back up.

Sometimes the Teacher starts explaining.

Sometimes the Planner starts creating an entire roadmap nobody asked for.

Sometimes the Peacekeeper starts negotiating away something I actually need.

Sometimes the little girl panics.

Sometimes my inner Bull comes charging through the door because apparently subtlety isn't her fucking spiritual gift.

They're all still here.

Healing didn't evict them.

I just don't have to let every one of them drive.

And maybe that's what inner safety actually means to me now.

Not isolation.

Not never needing anyone.

Not building walls so high nobody can ever hurt me again.

Not convincing myself I'm perfectly happy alone because wanting another human being would somehow make me less evolved.

No.

Safety means I don't abandon myself when somebody else is uncomfortable with me.

Safety means another person's anger doesn't automatically require my surrender.

Safety means disappointment doesn't automatically require me to fix it.

Safety means somebody can misunderstand me without me writing a fucking dissertation to correct their perception.

Safety means I can love somebody who is upset with me.

Safety means I can tolerate uncertainty without immediately trying to control the outcome.

Safety means I can hear another person's pain without automatically accepting responsibility for causing all of it.

Safety means I can examine my behavior honestly without turning accountability into self-abandonment.

Safety means I can say no.

Safety means I can leave something unresolved.

Safety means I can put down what isn't mine.

And maybe most importantly:

Safety means I can remain with myself even when somebody else chooses not to.

But I Am So Fucking Tired of Being Good at This

And here's the part of healing I don't think we talk about enough.

Sometimes realizing that you can take care of yourself does NOT feel empowering.

Sometimes it feels fucking devastating.

Because I know I can.

Of course I can.

I've been doing it forever.

I can figure shit out.

I can work harder.

I can make the money.

I can carry the groceries.

I can make the appointment.

I can drive myself.

I can feed myself.

I can regulate myself.

I can soothe myself.

I can sleep alone.

I can solve the problem.

I can rebuild.

I can survive heartbreak.

I can create another plan.

I can start over.

I know.

That isn't the fucking question anymore.

The question is:

When do I get to put some of it down?

When do I get to lay my head somewhere and know another adult is awake too?

When does somebody say, I've got this one, and I don't have to secretly remain prepared to take it back?

When does someone notice I'm exhausted before I have to prove it?

When does someone remember?

When does someone follow through?

When does somebody carry part of life not because I am incapable, but because we are partners and it belongs to both of us?

When do I get more than a night here and a night there where my body finally remembers what rest feels like?

I don't want another lesson in how to need nobody.

I don't want healing to turn me into an island.

I don't want self-love weaponized into some bullshit philosophy that says everything another human being could ever provide should first be provided entirely by me.

There are things we cannot fully give ourselves.

Another person's arms are not my arms.

Another person's eyes seeing me are not my eyes seeing myself.

Another human choosing to stay present with me is not the same experience as me staying present with myself.

Being touched is relational.

Being witnessed is relational.

Sex is relational.

Partnership is relational.

Co-regulation is relational.

Shared responsibility is relational.

Being cared for by another human being is relational.

Wanting those things does not mean I have failed to heal.

It means I'm fucking human.

I don't need someone to rescue me from my life.

I want someone willing to share one with me.

There's a difference.

And I May Never Get It

That's the sentence I don't particularly want to write.

But I refuse to replace one illusion with another.

I cannot promise the little girl that some perfect man is coming.

I cannot tell her that if she heals enough, manifests correctly, raises her vibration, chooses herself hard enough or finally learns every fucking lesson the universe apparently assigned her, somebody will appear and provide everything she has ever wanted.

I don't know that.

Nobody does.

Maybe the man I love chooses to become someone capable of building differently.

Maybe he doesn't.

Maybe our paths eventually meet differently.

Maybe they don't.

Maybe somebody I haven't met enters my life someday.

Maybe partnership eventually looks completely different from anything I've imagined.

I don't fucking know.

And uncertainty still hurts.

Because there is a part of me that wants someone to tell that little girl:

Don't worry, honey. He's coming.

But that would just be another promise I cannot guarantee will be kept.

And she has had enough of those.

So I would rather tell her the truth.

I don't know who's coming.

I don't know when.

I don't know what love will look like from here.

But I know this:

I will not make you accept harm because we're afraid nobody else will come.

I will not tell you that breadcrumbs are enough because there might not be another meal.

I will not make you earn love by becoming indispensable.

I will not silence you so somebody else stays comfortable.

I will not hand your body over to keep connection.

I will not keep putting you back into relationships where your job is to make everybody else okay.

I will not make you stand at the fucking window waiting.

We're going to live.

We're going to build.

We're going to create.

We're going to love.

We're going to laugh.

We're going to fuck up.

We're going to keep learning.

We're going to keep becoming.

And if somebody wants to walk beside us—

they are going to have to fucking walk.

Not be dragged.

Not be carried.

Not be coached every mile.

Not sit on the side of the road while I hike backward repeatedly to convince them the destination is worth reaching.

Walk.

Beside me.

As another imperfect, wounded, beautiful, accountable human being who understands that neither one of us is greater than the other.

Neither one of us is less than the other.

Neither one of us is responsible for becoming the other's parent.

And neither one of us gets to outsource our becoming to the person we claim to love.

Maybe Home Was Me All Along

I used to think home was something I was waiting for other people to create.

Then I thought home was something I had to create for everybody else.

Now I'm beginning to understand something different.

Maybe home isn't only where I live.

Maybe home is the relationship I have finally built with myself.

Not in some cheesy, all you need is self-love kind of way.

I still want people inside it.

I still want love.

I still want partnership.

I still want another human body beside mine.

I still want somebody in the kitchen.

I still want somebody laughing with me from another room.

I still want somebody who sees the exhausted look on my face and says:

Go sit down. I've got dinner.

I still want to know what it feels like to build something with another adult where neither one of us has to disappear for the relationship to survive.

But I finally understand that anyone entering this home is entering something I fought very fucking hard to create.

And I don't mean the apartment.

I mean me.

This internal home.

This place where the little girl finally has a responsible adult.

Where the wounded parts get heard without automatically becoming decision-makers.

Where the Bull gets a voice without being handed a flamethrower every fucking time.

Where Caretaker Cathy can love without taking everybody's responsibilities home with her.

Where the Teacher can teach people who actually came to learn.

Where the Healer doesn't have to turn every person she loves into a fucking treatment plan.

Where the woman gets to be a woman.

Where she gets to want.

Need.

Receive.

Rest.

Play.

Create.

Fuck.

Laugh.

Cry.

Change her mind.

Say no.

Say yes.

Be wrong.

Repair.

And continue becoming.

I created the fucking home I spent my childhood waiting for.

And maybe the next lesson isn't learning how to protect it by never letting anyone inside.

Maybe it's learning something much harder:

who is capable and willing to help me care for it once I open the door.

Wake Up. Show Up. Grow the Fuck Up.

And to the men who read this and recognize some piece of themselves somewhere in these words:

This is not me telling you that you are broken.

This is not me telling you that women are more evolved.

And this is not me telling you that you should have arrived in adulthood already knowing how to create emotional safety, communicate assertively, repair conflict, understand attachment, regulate your nervous system, examine your childhood or build a healthy relationship.

Maybe nobody fucking taught you.

Maybe the men who came before you didn't know either.

Maybe your father disappeared—or was physically present and emotionally absent.

Maybe you watched men shut down, rage, drink, work, fuck, fight, avoid, control or disappear.

Maybe vulnerability got you ridiculed.

Maybe nobody taught you what to do with shame.

Maybe your mother wounded you too.

Maybe you learned that love meant chasing someone who withheld it.

Maybe you learned to sweet-talk your way out of conflict because charm was safer than accountability.

Maybe you learned to appease.

Manipulate.

Run.

Maybe you learned that anger was the only emotion a boy could express without being called weak.

Maybe you learned that being loved meant being taken care of, that women would eventually handle what you didn't know how to handle, or that saying I love you should be enough to prove it.

Maybe nobody showed you another way.

That matters.

It matters enormously.

And it still doesn't get to become the reason another human being has to spend the rest of her life absorbing the consequences.

At some point in adulthood, the question has to stop being only:

What happened to me?

and become:

What am I choosing to do with what happened to me?

That's where agency lives.

Not blame.

Not shame.

Choice.

You May Not Know How to Be the Man She Needs

Maybe you genuinely don't know how.

Good.

Start there.

There is nothing shameful about not knowing something you were never taught.

There is something very different about knowing you don't know and deciding everyone around you should continue paying the price because learning is uncomfortable.

You don't need the perfect vocabulary.

You don't need to quote attachment theory.

You don't need to meditate for three fucking hours.

You need willingness.

Willingness to notice.

To learn.

To practice.

To fuck it up and come back.

Willingness to hear:

You hurt me.

without immediately translating it into:

You think I'm a horrible person.

Willingness to ask:

What belongs to me here?

Willingness to sit inside the heat of accountability without throwing the flames back at the person standing across from you.

Willingness to say:

I did that.

That wasn't okay.

I understand why it affected you.

I don't know how to change this yet, but I'm going to learn.

And then—

actually fucking learn.

Because apologies without practice eventually become another form of waiting.

Promises without behavior eventually become noise.

And potential without participation cannot build a relationship.

Maybe she doesn't need you to rescue her.

Maybe she has spent her entire fucking life rescuing herself.

Maybe she doesn't need another hero.

Maybe she needs a teammate.

Someone who communicates when plans change.

Someone who can hear no without turning it into rejection.

Someone who understands that replacing what he took does not necessarily repair what happened when he decided he was entitled to take it.

Someone who recognizes that “I have your back” is a behavior.

Someone who doesn't require a woman to become his mother in order for him to become her partner.

Someone who brings ingredients.

Someone who comes into the fucking kitchen.

Because she isn't asking him to make the entire meal.

She's asking him to stop arriving at the table expecting a feast while offering breadcrumbs.

And maybe you recognize yourself there.

Okay.

Now you can choose.

Because It's Never Too Fucking Late

That's the part I don't want lost underneath my anger.

I believe in human beings.

Sometimes that belief has probably gotten me into trouble.

Sometimes I have confused believing in someone's capacity with assuming responsibility for helping them realize it.

Those are not the same thing.

People can change.

Not because another person loves them hard enough.

Not because somebody explains them into transformation.

Not because a woman sacrifices herself long enough for a wounded boy to finally understand what she's been trying to give him.

People change when something becomes conscious and they become willing to participate in changing it.

People struggle.

People relapse into old patterns.

People get tired.

People get scared.

People fuck up.

Growth is not linear.

Capacity is human potential.

Commitment to change becomes observable through behavior.

And I can believe completely in another person's capacity—

and still stop waiting for them to use it.

I can hope someone heals without becoming their healer.

I can support someone doing the work without becoming the work.

I can love someone without making my life the waiting room for their transformation.

So to the man who genuinely wants something different:

It's never too fucking late to make a different choice.

Maybe you don't know how to be the man she needs.

Maybe you don't even know how to be the man you need.

Become him.

Not for her approval.

Not because she'll necessarily stay.

Not because doing the work guarantees you'll get the relationship back.

And not because growth earns you access to another human being.

Do it because your wounded little boy deserves a grown man too.

A man who can finally tell him:

I've got this.

You don't have to run.

You don't have to fight everybody.

You don't have to manipulate connection to keep it.

And you don't have to drive anymore.

Maybe that's the work for all of us.

No Gods. No Monsters. Just Humans.

And this is where I climb down from the fucking pedestal too.

The strong one.

The healer.

The therapist.

The teacher.

The woman who knows.

The Goddess.

Fuck that.

I am a soul embodying a human body, living on this Earth, trying to understand what the hell I'm here to learn and what I'm supposed to do with the time I have.

Just like everyone else.

No human being walking this planet is inherently greater than another.

And no human being is inherently less.

My education doesn't make me superior.

My consciousness doesn't make me superior.

My years of healing don't exempt me from shadows.

My trauma doesn't excuse the ways I sometimes hurt other people.

And my ability to identify a pattern doesn't mean I've mastered it.

Sometimes I still chase.

I rescue.

I over-explain.

I investigate when uncertainty scares me.

I make assumptions.

I get defensive.

Sometimes Caretaker Cathy still picks up the fucking clipboard.

Sometimes Bull grabs the microphone.

And sometimes the little girl still stands at the window:

Are you coming?

I am becoming too.

That's the point.

This isn't a healed woman lecturing wounded men.

It's one human being looking at another and asking:

Can we stop pretending our wounds give us permission to keep handing them to each other?

Can we own our shit?

Can we stop making villains out of people who show us where we still hurt?

Can we stop making saviors out of people simply because they temporarily soothe it?

Can we love each other without abandoning ourselves?

Can we allow love to become something more conscious than fucking auto-repeat?

I don't know.

But I want to find out.

And I know I can only do my part.

The Becoming

Maybe that's what this entire human experience is.

The becoming.

Not arriving.

Not becoming so healed that nothing ever hurts again.

Not finding the perfect partner.

Not transcending every wound.

Not becoming so independent that we no longer need one another.

Becoming.

Seeing something we couldn't see yesterday.

Making a different choice today.

Recognizing an old pattern halfway through instead of three years later.

Repairing something we once would have defended.

Speaking when we once disappeared.

Listening when we once attacked.

Staying when we once ran.

Leaving when we once abandoned ourselves to remain.

Learning.

Practicing.

Failing.

Repairing.

Trying again.

Becoming.

And perhaps that's why this grief feels different.

I don't need to know today who another human being is going to become.

That's his work.

I don't know where his path leads.

I don't know whether our paths eventually meet differently.

I don't know whether the person who someday helps me carry this life is someone I already know or somebody I haven't met yet.

And I'm finally beginning to understand:

I don't have to know.

I have spent far too much of my life standing at the fucking window.

Waiting.

Waiting for adults to become responsible.

Waiting for promises to become behavior.

Waiting for apologies to become change.

Waiting for potential to become participation.

Waiting for another person to pick up the tools.

Waiting for somebody to come home.

I don't want to organize the rest of my life around everybody else's unfinished business.

I have my own becoming to do.

I can still love.

I can still hope.

I can remember the beautiful moments without using them to erase the painful ones.

I can grieve what I wanted without pretending I didn't want it.

I can miss being held.

I can want partnership.

I can want somebody to have my back.

I can want to rest.

I can want the fucking meal.

And I no longer have to apologize for being hungry.

The little girl survived on breadcrumbs because sometimes breadcrumbs were all she had.

She became extraordinarily good at making them last.

She learned how to turn scarcity into survival.

Eventually, she became a woman who could take almost nothing and somehow create abundance for everyone around her.

I fucking love her for that.

But she doesn't have to do it anymore.

Neither do I.

I don't know who will sit at my table.

I don't know who will walk beside me.

I don't know who will someday enter this home and be willing to help care for it.

But I know what I will no longer do.

I will not keep breaking my own heart to create the illusion that I am not walking alone.

I will not make another feast out of breadcrumbs and call it abundance.

I will not confuse my ability to carry everything with evidence that I should.

I will not become another person's adult for them.

And I will not stop becoming while I wait to see what somebody else chooses.

My love can remain.

My hope can remain.

My humanity can remain.

But so can my boundaries.

So can my voice.

So can my fucking seat at the table.

And if someday someone wants to build something beautiful beside me, I don't need him to arrive finished.

I don't need perfection.

I don't need a king.

I don't need a savior.

I need another human being willing to pick up his own tools, look at what we're creating and say:

Let's build.

Because I finally understand:

I can build a home by myself.

But if we're going to build a relationship—

there have to be two fucking builders.