The Part of Me I Hide

There is a part of me I hide

so deeply

that even I pretend

she isn’t there.

She’s the one who knows

I have never truly believed

I am safe

in anyone’s love.

Not really.

She’s the part of me

that waits for the moment

they get tired,

or bored,

or disappointed,

and finally see what I’ve always feared:

that I am

“too much” and “not enough”

at the same time.

She remembers being small

and learning that my feelings

came with eye rolls,

sighs,

tight voices saying,

“You’re too sensitive,”

“What now?”

“What do you have to be sad about?”

She remembers how quickly

I learned to translate that into:

Your pain is an inconvenience.

Your joy is embarrassing.

Your needs are a problem.

So I became careful.

Calculated.

I learned the exact size

of myself

that made other people

most comfortable.

And then I carved myself down

to fit it.

The part of me I hide

is the one who never stopped bleeding

from that.

She is the girl who sits quietly

in the middle of the bed at night

and thinks,

“If I showed everything—

all the fear,

all the anger,

all the wanting—

would anyone stay?”

She is the one who wants

someone to come up behind her,

wrap their arms around her

for no reason at all,

and whisper,

“You don’t have to hold it together

with me.”

But she doesn’t ask,

because she’s learned

that needing too much

makes people pull away.

So she tucks the ache

back inside her ribs,

smiles,

and says, “I’m fine.”

The part of me I hide

is the part that is not fine.

She is the part

that secretly resents

always being the strong one,

the steady one,

the one people come to

when they’re falling apart—

while no one notices

I am crumbling quietly

on the inside.

She is the part

that sometimes feels

unseen in her own life.

Present for everyone,

missing for herself.

She is the part

that wants to scream,

“I’M TIRED,”

not tired like

I need a nap

but tired like

I am so exhausted

from always being the safe place

and never having one.

She is the one

who imagines what it would be like

to fall apart

and have someone stay,

to sob so hard she can’t breathe

and not be told to calm down,

to be messy and raw and ugly-crying

and still be called beautiful.

She is the part of me

that doesn’t trust that day will come.

So she hides.

She hides the anger

at the people who should have protected her

and didn’t.

She hides the grief

for all the versions of herself

she had to kill off

just to be accepted.

She hides the jealousy

of people who were allowed

to be soft,

messy,

loud,

sensitive—

and still loved.

She hides the part

that feels like a little girl

trapped in a grown body,

waiting for an adult who never came.

And beneath all of that—

beneath the fear,

the exhaustion,

the quiet anger—

there is an even deeper layer:

The part of me I hide

is the part that thinks

maybe everyone was right

about me.

Maybe I am too much.

Maybe I am hard to love.

Maybe if I were easier, quieter,

less emotional,

less intense,

less me,

I would have been held

the way I needed.

That is the thought

I never say out loud.

That is the one I guard

with teeth and claws.

Because if I look at it too long,

it feels like proof

that something is fundamentally wrong

with me.

And yet—

underneath even that,

deep in the place

no one has ever reached—

she’s still there,

this small, stubborn,

aching-soft version of me

who keeps hoping.

Hoping that one day

someone will see her

and not turn away.

Someone will notice

how hard I’ve tried

to be “easy,”

“low-maintenance,”

“strong,”

when all I ever wanted

was to be loved

without having to earn it.

She hopes that one day

I will be that someone.

That I will stop

repeating the world’s cruelty

in my own head.

That I will stop telling her

to shut up,

to calm down,

to be less.

That I will be the first one

to say,

“I see you.

You are not too much.

You are just as deep

as someone like you

was always going to be.”

The part of me I hide

is not some dark monster

inside my chest.

She is the most innocent thing

I have left—

the soft, unarmored heart

no one ever learned to hold.

And maybe going this deep

isn’t about waiting

for someone else

to finally understand.

Maybe going this deep

is me opening the door

from the inside,

sitting down beside her,

and whispering,

“You don’t have to hide

from me

anymore.”