The Weight of Tenderness

I have always felt a little too deeply. Emotions don’t pass through me lightly; they stay, they linger, they carve their way into memory. Sometimes I think of myself as a vessel, overflowing when joy comes, brimming when love arrives, and carrying a quiet heaviness when pain decides to visit.

I love openly, but I also question whether I am worthy of the same tenderness I give. Attention makes me glow, yet it also makes me ache with doubt. I crave affection, yet when it arrives unasked, I wonder if it is real or if it comes with strings attached.

                

But I know this: I am not afraid of feeling. I would rather carry the weight of intense emotions than move through life untouched. My heart bends, breaks, and mends itself, always choosing to remain soft in a world that asks for hardness.

I am, at my core, an emotional being, fragile at times, fierce at others, but always alive to the fullness of what it means to feel. I am not a finished sentence, but a line still being written. My name may remain the same, but the self that answers to it is always shifting, gathering voices, holding onto silences, and moving toward a language of my own.