Don't Bet on Me Being the Soft One

There’s this weird expectation people have about women like me.

They think if you push us far enough we’ll collapse into tears, apologize for existing, and start explaining ourselves like customer service representatives for our own pain.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, I’ll try to be easier to love next time.”

Yeah.

No.

I think the confusion started because I look soft.

I plant things.

I talk to my dogs like they’re tiny emotional support roommates.

I collect succulents like a Victorian woman with delicate nerves.

But here’s the thing nobody seems to factor in.

I survived a motorcycle accident that rearranged my brain.

So if you’re betting on me being fragile, you already misunderstood the assignment.

Because when your skull meets asphalt at highway speed, something strange happens inside your personality.

The illusion of safety dies first.

Then the part of you that thinks you have unlimited patience for bullshit quietly packs its bags and leaves too.

After that?

You start seeing things differently.

You stop believing words that don’t match behavior.

You stop confusing chaos with love.

And you develop this very inconvenient habit of not gaslighting yourself anymore just to keep the peace.

It’s honestly terrible for people who relied on the old version of you.

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People still think I’m the girl I was before June 1, 2019.

The one who assumed effort meant love.

The one who tried harder every time someone treated her like a temporary inconvenience.

That girl existed once.

She also had a fully intact frontal lobe and a much higher tolerance for nonsense.

The accident changed that.

Now my brain works a little differently.

Not worse.

Just… less interested in pretending.

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For example.

I study soil science now.

Which is hilarious, because soil is brutally honest.

Soil doesn’t care about your excuses.

If it’s depleted, it shows you.

If something poisoned it, you see it in the roots.

If something keeps draining it without giving anything back, the whole ecosystem eventually collapses.

Nature doesn’t do emotional manipulation.

It does patterns.

You learn to read them.

Once you learn that skill, it becomes extremely awkward to ignore the same patterns in people.

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And that’s the part nobody likes.

Because once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it.

You start recognizing when someone only shows up when it’s convenient.

You notice when the emotional labor in a relationship looks suspiciously like a full-time job you never applied for.

You start realizing that some people didn’t actually love you.

They just loved how hard you worked to keep them comfortable.

It’s a tough realization.

But it’s also incredibly freeing.

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I used to think becoming stronger meant becoming harder.

Meaner.

Less emotional.

Turns out that’s not what happened.

Instead I became something much more inconvenient.

I became someone who notices things.

Someone who trusts her instincts.

Someone who no longer confuses loyalty with self-abandonment.

Which is terrible news for anyone who benefited from the old version of me.

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So if you’re sitting somewhere assuming I’m going to crumble because life has been heavy lately…

You might want to adjust your expectations.

Yes, I cry sometimes.

Yes, I get exhausted.

Yes, there are days where the weight of everything feels like too much.

But those days still end the same way.

I get up.

I feed my dogs.

I water my plants.

And I keep building a life that doesn’t require me to disappear just to make someone else comfortable.

⸻

Because the accident didn’t make me fragile.

It made me aware.

And once you wake up like that, there’s no going back to sleep.

So if anyone out there is still betting on me being the soft one…

I wouldn’t.

I’ve survived worse things than disappointment.

And I’ve gotten pretty good at growing in difficult soil.