I still want comfort from the people who taught me to do without it

Dear Delyara, This is one of the most confusing wounds I carry. The people who made softness uncertain in my childhood can still, even now, wake the deepest hunger for it in me. One kind sentence from them means too much. One cold one cuts too fast. I’m not beyond it. I wish I were. What makes it harder is the humiliation of still wanting what once came unreliably. There is a child in me who keeps waiting by a door that should have stopped mattering this much by now. She still wants to be seen gently by the very people who trained her to become self-sufficient too early. I think that contradiction has shaped more of my adult life than I’ve ever properly admitted. Who I choose. Who I fear. What tone unravels me. What kindness undoes me. It all still points backward more often than I’d like.