This is what my brain does. This is what it’s always done. It hears a partial sentence and fills in the ending with the version that hurts the most, the version that confirms every terrible thing I’ve ever believed about myself.
I know—Iknow—I should wait. Should stay and hear the rest. Should give him a chance to finish that sentence.
But my body is already moving, and my brain is already writing the ending because I’ve heard versions of this my entire life:
Too loud. Too much. Too chaotic. Why can’t you just calm down?
The familiar static fills my head when the pain is too big to process. Then my brain does what it always does when rejection hits: it yanks the emergency cord and reroutes everything into action.
This is the part I hate. The part where I can watch myself doing something self-destructive and be completely unable to stop.
Fix it. Be better. Make it make sense. Don’t let him regret you.
I turn away before I can hear any more. I can’t make myself stay; my body won't let me. My feet carry me back down the hallway, and the fire in my chest incinerates every hopeful thing I allowed myself to feel last night.
In my room, I shut the door quietly and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, my back against the wood, my knees pulled to my chest. My throat is too tight to swallow. The bees are back with that buzzing, swarming sensation that fills my head when everything is too much.
Okay. Okay, Jane.
So this is it, then. This is the part where reality catches up. Where the man who said, “You're enough,” realizes I’m actually too much.
Except maybe I can still fix it. Maybe if I’m quieter. Calmer. Maybe if I show him I can be different.
This is the thing about my brain: it can’t sit with pain. It has todosomething. Find a solution. Make a plan. Turn devastation into a to-do list.
And the plan crystallizes with awful clarity: Become someone he wants.
Neat. Calm. Manageable. Soft around the edges. Not a whirlwind. A woman who fits into a schedule instead of wrecking it.
I swallow hard, scrubbing a hand over my face.
It’s ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous. But it’s also so familiar that it feels like coming home to a house I hate.
Because somewhere in the mess of being raised by three men who loved me but didn’t understand me, I learned a survival rule: If you want to be loved, you make yourself easier.You learn what triggers their worry, and you smooth those parts down. You notice what makes them sigh, and you stop doing it. You become an easier version of yourself, one piece at a time, until you can’t remember what the original looked like.
You trade pieces of yourself for approval. And you tell yourself it’s fine. It’s a compromise. It’s what love is.
And now here I am again, ready to shave myself down to fit into the space Tex might accept. Because hechoseme, and I can't bear to lose that. Because the alternative of being myself and having him walk away is a pain I don’t think I can survive.
I know the cost. I’ve paid it before. Parts of myself I gave away to make other people comfortable—my volume, my enthusiasm, my big feelings, my wild ideas. I gave them away like they were worthless, like keeping them would cost more than losing them.
It never worked. It neverworks. The people I sanded myself down for always eventually wanted more sanding, or they left anyway, or they stayed but looked at me like I was a project instead of a person.
But Tex is different. He has to be. Because if I lose him, I don’t know how to survive it.
Maybe this time, if I get it right, if I'm neat enough, calm enough, manageable enough, he won’t look at me and think “too much.” He’ll look at me and think “mine.”
The thought settles in my chest like a vow I don’t remember making. Like a deal with a devil I can’t see. Some part of me knows that this will cost me pieces of myself I might never get back, but the alternative is losing him. And right now, at this moment, with his words still echoing in my skull, I would trade anything to make that not happen.
My phone is on the dresser. I grab it with shaking fingers, open my messages, and scroll until I find Kitty.
We’ve only met once, but she felt safe. She looked at me like I was a person, not a problem to be solved. And right now, I need someone who won’t try to fix me. I need someone who will just... let me exist. Even if I’m about to ask her to help me fix myself anyway. The irony isn’t lost on me.
I type before I can overthink it.
Me:Hey. Are you home? Can I come over this morning?
I pace the bedroom, my gaze fixed on the screen.
