What the Wreckage Taught Me

I was the girl who tried to turn wreckage into refuge, who called the ache “loyalty,” because I didn’t know love was meant to feel safe. I stitched myself into men already unraveling, climbing into their beds as if my body were a promise.

If I gave enough,

bedroom-eyes enough,

pleased enough,

they might finally choose me.

I thought sex was the way to be seen, the game that won affection—never realizing the men would cherish only the act, leaving the fractured, love-stricken girl inside it to wither alone. Sex was my devotion.

Pain teaches with a cruel tongue. It showed me that devotion means nothing in the hands of a man collapsing inward.

I learned too late that a lion who roars, is actually a coward, and a man who swears he’d die for you might try to take you with him.

And the one you saved might still turn around and leave you with the wounds.

Some truths surface only in the ruins: Beauty and flesh can open doors, but they do not always lead to love. Hope can rot if you cling too long, sacrifice becomes madness when poured into someone who swallows it whole, and the heart you break to shield a man is still the heart you must carry alone.

So let this be the warning: Do not make a home in someone else’s storm. Do not set yourself on fire to keep a broken man warm. Do not trade your peace for a promise that trembles.

Ignore the red flags, and you will become one. Teach a man you’ll stay through hell, and he will hand you the matches. Love without boundaries, and you will write your own obituary long before the story ends.

I’ve walked these roads, and I know the cost. Choose the moral path, before the wrong one births a ghost that you will end up carrying for the rest of your life. Desire feels harmless in the beginning, But I've watched it unravel a man all the way to the grave.

I will no longer bleed for hands that cannot hold me. I will lift my own weight, tend my own wounds, and let the men who taught me how to fracture… fade into the distance of what I survived.

And to the girl who trembles now:
Do not offer your body to a lustful man, do not pour your heart into someone who only knows taking. Do not mistake devotion for safety, or sacrifice for love. Do not give yourself to a man whose grip threatens both his life and yours if you choose to walk away. Do not believe that your body and beauty will make him choose you, he will always choose himself, his pride, the wife, and the life he’s built, no matter how brightly you shine.

Keep your curiosity, your tenderness, your soft heart. Protect the girl inside you who dreams, who aches who longs to be known. Love yourself first, and the world will have no choice but to see you.

Chloe