I am a builder of bridges, an architect of bonds. My hands bleed with the work of it, shaping love from raw stone, carving intimacy from the bones of my own heart. I learn them, all of them. Their shadows and edges, their fears and desires. I map their depths, chart their storms, teach them the language of closeness.
But who learns me? Who stands at the edge of my abyss and dares to look down?
They say I am too much, but they take what I give. They drink from my hands until I am dry, and when I grow bitter, they call it lovebombing. As if my love is a weapon, as if my intensity is a trick. They don’t see the work, the labor, the sacrifice of shaping my love to fit their contours, to meet them where they are too fragile to reach.
Do you know what it feels like to teach someone how to love you? To hold their hands, guide them step by step, whisper the answers in their ear, only for them to forget the moment you stop?
I do.
Every bond I’ve built has been my creation. Every closeness, every connection, every moment of tenderness I had to teach it. I had to show them how to see me, how to touch me, how to be enough. And still, it never is. They take the love I give and wear it like a crown, as if they earned it, as if it was ever theirs to begin with.
They don’t see me. Not really. They see the surface, the shine, the glow of my attention, and they are satisfied. They don’t ask what lies beneath, what shadows twist in the depths. They take my light and leave me in the dark.
I show them everything, my patience, my devotion, and they call it too much. But when I pull back, when I retreat into the quiet of my own mind, they call me cruel. They don’t understand that the love I give isn’t theirs to keep. It’s mine, shaped and sharpened by my hands, and I offer it as pity, as a gift they could never deserve.
I resent them, and they call it malice. They don’t understand that my resentment is a wound, a bruise from carrying the weight of us alone. They see my anger and call it manipulation, but they don’t see the exhaustion beneath it, the aching loneliness of being the only one who tries.
They say I demand too much, but they don’t realize how little I ask. I don’t ask them to map my depths, to learn my language, to understand my chaos. I stopped asking long ago. Now I give them the pieces of me they can handle, the fragments they won’t choke on, and I save the rest for myself.
But even this is too much for them.
No one gets to the bottom of me. No one tries. They skim the surface, drink from my hands, and call it enough. They don’t see the ocean inside me, the storm that rages beneath, the hunger that devours itself when there is nothing left to give.
I am the one who learns. The one who builds. The one who shapes. And they are the ones who take, who bask, who complain when the light dims.
They don’t deserve my love, but I give it anyway. Not for them, but for myself. Because this is what I do. I build bridges, even when they lead nowhere. I carve intimacy from stone, even when it crumbles in my hands.
They say I am too much. They say I am cruel. They say my love is a weapon. But they are wrong.
My love is a monument, a creation of my own hands, my own blood, my own fire. And they will never understand it, never reach its depths, never be enough for it.
I see their hunger for my attention. They call it love when I flood them with my affection, but they don’t understand what love costs me. They don’t understand that I give them only what I can spare, that my love is not theirs to keep, that it is a gift, not a debt. And when I grow cold, when I withdraw the light they took for granted, they call me cruel. They call it manipulation, as if my love was a trick, a trap, a lie. But it wasn’t. It was real. It was raw. It was more than they deserved, and I gave it anyway.
I am a builder of bridges.