I grew up learning that love was something you worked for.
Not something that was freely given.
I learned to be useful, quiet and strong because it felt safer than being myself.

For a long time I did not know what it meant to be cared for without performing.
I shaped myself around the needs of others, always hoping it might make me worthy.
The child I was learned to cope instead of feel and to disappear instead of cause trouble.

As an adult I kept going in the only ways I knew.
I stayed busy.
I stayed helpful.
I stayed far away from the parts of me that were lonely or hurting.
Then illness arrived and everything I used to rely on fell away.
My body slowed me down until I could not avoid myself anymore.

In that stillness I began to see the self that had been missing for years.
Not an old version of me.
Not someone I had lost.
But someone I had never been allowed to become.
Someone human.
Someone feeling.
Someone real.

This space is part of that becoming.
I write to understand myself.
I write to meet the child who never had the chance to exist with ease or safety.
I write because honesty feels calmer than pretending and softness feels better than strength that hurts.

If these words land somewhere familiar inside you, I hope they remind you that you are not alone in learning how to exist beyond survival.
There is room here for you too.