What does it mean to be held, not just by another, but by oneself?
I once believed being held was the result of softness, something you earned by being still, gracious, accommodating. I’m laying on the grass, J sits across from me. Perhaps, for a time, that made sense. I used to practice tenderness like it was an artform; folding my limbs, my voice, my desires into something more palatable, more respectable. But to be held now, not just by J but by myself, requires a different choreography. It means making space for the sharpness of my own edges. Letting the ache stretch across the full span of me, not just the parts that can be easily soothed.
I think of how I used to watch lovers sleep, wondering if they dreamt of me. I wanted to be the kind of person who lingered in their mind. Someone who left a mark, who haunted in some romantic, painful way. But now I question what it might mean to leave no trace. To have a kiss not linger. To love without demanding explanation. To be something whole and sufficient, even in togetherness.
This is what J doesn’t quite understand; or maybe he does, and he’s just too gracious to say it aloud: I am not always in this body. Sometimes I’m watching myself from the outside, performing femininity so convincingly that even I am seduced. Sometimes I’m standing just beyond the scene, behind glass, watching a version of me whisper, “yes, just like that,” when she wants to scream, “no, not yet.”
When J cups my face and tells me I’m beautiful, I want to laugh. Not because I think he’s lying, but because beauty has always come with a cost. It’s the reason I’ve had to make myself small, had to flirt with danger, and have begun believing that I am anything but. When he cries into me, telling me, “You’re the most incredible woman I’ve met, inside and out,” I don’t take him seriously. As if the outside needs mention, I want to focus on my depths. And still, I perform it. Still, I paint my lips with colours named after sins and flowers, strut like someone who doesn’t bleed for every ounce of confidence.
There’s something unnerving about how J doesn’t recoil when I retreat. It would almost be easier if he got angry, if he accused me of cruelty when I lean into my sharper instincts. But he stays. He listens. He breathes with me. I’m learning that this is intimacy too: the refusal to punish another for being in pain. But what does it mean to hold myself, when so much of who I am has been shaped by the eyes of others?
I think about the women I’ve tried on like costumes. The cool girl. The reckless flirt. The over-intellectualised seductress. The delicate creature with the bloody smile. Each one a sanctuary, and each one a snare. I look back on these selves with a sort of reverent grief. Not for the lovers I’ve lost, but for the parts of myself I abandoned just to be loved.
J tells me I deserve softness. That I don’t have to suffer to be cherished. Maybe I believe him, like you believe a myth until the truth quietly arrives. The softness he offers is strange at first. It tastes unfamiliar. I take small bites. I don’t spit it out.
The truth is, I sometimes want to be ruined, but only on my terms. I want to feel my body collapse in devotion, not to him, not to any man, but to the possibility that I can burn and still survive. That desire doesn’t always have to end in disappearance. That I can be consumed without vanishing.
When he claws for me with questions that sink below me, I no longer try to seem light. I let myself fall into him completely. He groans, not with frustration, but with effort. I realise, maybe, I’ve been preparing for this all along. This radical acceptance. This refusal to shrink.
I often ask myself: what if I didn’t need to be desired to feel real? What if I didn’t have to be seen as beautiful to be valued? What if I could cherish the parts of myself that no one sees: the rage, the detachment, the strange tenderness that clings to me like perfume? J doesn’t answer those questions. Instead, he offers space for them to exist. That’s his quiet gift. Not solution, but presence. Not remedy, but rhythm.
In that rhythm, I begin to notice myself. Not just the version I perform, but the one beneath. The creature. The woman who bites. The girl who weeps. The being who wants to be held but doesn’t always know how to stay. I start to hold her. I start to forgive her.
Some nights I still chase chaos. I still message old lovers. I still crave danger because it’s easier than stillness. But I’m learning. I’m accepting that softness doesn’t mean weakness. That power doesn’t always arrive with noise. That to hold yourself is to say, with quiet conviction, “You’re allowed to exist.”
When I climb back into bed after those nights, when I come close to becoming someone I’ve outgrown, J doesn’t chastise. He pulls the duvet over me, kisses my forehead, and says nothing. In that silence, I begin again. Even with him beside me, he’s afforded me the space to hold myself. However agitating that task might be, he observes gracefully.
Not as the girl who needed to be wrecked, but as the woman who chooses which wreckage she walks away from.
WRITTEN BY: P. ELDRIDGE
FOUNDING EDITOR: P. ELDRIDGE
DESIGN: CAITLIN MCLOUGHLIN
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