To be soft.

On learning how to love the right way

I can’t remember the last time I let fear consume me; or the last time I let sadness drown me.

I don’t remember the last time I let myself melt into the arms of another person and totally let go of my ‘self’ and finally be home to myself.

I can’t remember being vulnerable, being naive, and being free.

I can’t remember the last time I let go of control, and that scares me.

—or at least it used to.

I have recently tried dating again - it’s not that I ever stopped wanting to, but it’s just that I have not been looking, you know, for love.

The last few times when I was preparing for love to come knocking, I was greeted with something else. Those things masked as love so well that I fell for it and stayed falling. And as those things stayed in my home, piece by piece, they left traces that never looked like love. Sometimes it was the Chanel Savage half-used cologne; other times, it was them receiving multiple texts from unsaved numbers.

Sure, I must have been so dumb not knowing, right?

When I was expecting love at the door, whatever came through, I still treated it like love. Mostly because it masked itself as love in the first place; sometimes because I never dared to check twice. I still taught it the Vietnamese words for “aunties” and “uncles” — just in case I’ll ever show it to my extended family like a prized posession. I fed it home-cooked dinners and sometimes chimed in for lunch. I faked a few (all of the) O’s and gave it ego strokes like never before. Whatever that was — greed, narcissism, shame — it was feasting at the table of my soul. I cut myself open for it, for fucks sake.

But it’s not like I never knew that those imposters were assholes; I knew. Not consciously, but in the back of my mind, I knew that I could not expect much from them. I was telling myself that “of course they’ll buy me flowers one of these days,” but, deep down, I was preparing myself for the most expected disappointment of a lifetime. I knew I could not count on them, yet I kept trying. That is what’s so frightening about self-conditioning.

I don’t have to go into the corner of my high school diary to pick out 2 lines fitting enough for you all to know that I was a traumatized child. Let’s be honest, I am hot and funny — something is definitely wrong with my childhood. But, I digress.

I was so accustomed to treating them with the same kindness and selflessness that it almost felt like begging for them to change. Somehow, me letting them get away with their weaponized incompetence—buying ox tail instead of actual beef from Kroger or getting a toothbrush when I wrote down “blush brush”—almost sounded like me begging them to forgive me for being correct. Somehow, me letting them not text me back the entire day before our planned date almost felt like me begging to spare me some time and learn how to love me. Somehow, I was choosing these damn losers and begging them to learn how to win my heart over. The success rate has stayed at 0%. As an investment, this is ruining my portfolio.

But, I never truly stopped craving it, love.

After 20-something failed talking stages and 2 failed relationships, I swung myself to the opposite side of the pendulum—to never going on dates again for a good half a year. I was so focused on working on myself, bettering my life, maximizing my work outcomes, pushing my limits, denying social conditioning. With that, my emotions, the vulnerability I so frivolously used in my early 20s, were carefully hidden under 20lbs of “I don’t care’s” and “I’m better than this’s.” Standing tall, while wobbly, on those moral highgrounds erased the memory of feeling anything at all for me. This is my new normal—not feeling. Not for anyone, anything, nor for me.

So, what if I’m gripping onto reality so tight that even I don’t have the right to breathe anymore? Or am I hanging on to it just fine? How do I know where to balance it? Do I have to do this forever?

I found myself forcing myself to cry. Over what? Mundane things that I used to sob over, feelings of being betrayed, of hurt, of old wounds being ripped open. Not sure if it is just me becoming an old dry bitch, but I could not cry or maintain my emotions for long, which honestly sounds psychotic, I know. Why would I want to feel negativity for a long time? Because that’s the only way I knew how to experience negativity, emotionality, and suffering.

Unfamiliarity feels like a threat no matter if it’s a negative or positive change. All I know is that I am used to drowning myself in self-pity, depression, and the uglies in life. Like someone who’s been drowning in water for so long, being saved and finally breathing again feels like dying—the type of dying one needs for a resurrection. And I died a glorious death.

On the other side of this pendulum swing is me, right now, writing these words, knowing where I am and how I need to be. To be soft.

And what comes with being soft does not consist of blindly showing my fragility to those who can’t read the “fragile” label when carrying a piece of my soul with them. I am yet to know what that would look like for the people who love me; I have a clue, but the evidence remains sparse. The successful cases were never romantic, and the romantic cases were never successful.

Yet, as for me, I know one thing—is that I will keep on learning how to love myself correctly, deeply, fully, and passionately. I will wake every day loving myself and putting myself first. At the end of the day, I will be the only person who will do that for me my whole life. And if that’s how my story will continue to be written, I know I would still be happy.

Maybe my princess charming has always been me. Isn’t that so bad?