On Watching the Tender Parts Die

I can feel it dying in me.

Not in the cinematic way people imagine when they hear a sentence like that. Not a single dramatic crack, not a clean “before and after,” not a tidy storyline where the pain arrives, does its speech, and exits stage left. It’s quieter. Meaner. It’s a slow dimming—like a lamp that used to fill the whole room with warmth, now flickering because the power keeps cutting out, and nobody wants to admit the wiring has been sabotaged.

Used. Lied to. Abused. Abandoned.

Over and over by people who knew exactly how to speak to the part of me that still believes words are sacred. They say the perfect things. The phrases that sound like music. That I’m amazing, I’m wonderful, I’m sexy, I’m wanted, I’m needed. They tell me I’m rare, like rarity is supposed to protect me from being treated like a resource.

And then they leave.

Sometimes it’s the slow pullback. Sometimes it’s instant. Sometimes it’s like they do a full 180 so fast it makes me dizzy—one day I’m “home,” and the next I’m a stranger they can erase without explanation. They disappear, or they throw a false message in my face like a smoke bomb, and then disappear anyway. It’s not even a breakup half the time. It’s a vanishing. A deletion. A quiet statement that I was never a person to them—just an experience they finished consuming.

I can feel it breaking in me: the endless kindness and compassion, the never-dying love.

I used to think that part of me was indestructible. Not because I’m naïve, but because I’ve lived through enough cruelty to know exactly what it looks like—and I still chose tenderness anyway. I still tried to be good. I still tried to be compassionate. I still tried to love with the kind of intention that says, “Even if the world is burning, I will be water.”

But something happens when the same wound gets reopened too many times. Not by accident, not by misunderstanding, but by pattern. It’s like scar tissue stops forming, and the body just goes, “No. I can’t do this again. I can’t keep building bridges for people who treat my chest like a toll booth.”

And my chest is the loudest place in my body right now.

Hollow. Emptying. Barren.

If you’ve never felt that kind of sensation, it’s hard to explain without sounding melodramatic. It’s not a thought. It’s not a metaphor I’m choosing for artistic flair. It’s a physical vacancy, like someone scooped out the warm center of me and left behind the architecture. I can breathe. I can function. I can talk. But there’s a missingness. A “something is gone” that sits behind my sternum like a winter field where nothing will grow.

It’s been many moments over the past few months, layering on each other, over and over. Not one tragedy. Not one singular betrayal. A pile. A stack. The kind of accumulation that makes your nervous system start living in the posture of impact—always bracing, always listening for the next footstep that never comes, or the next door that slams without warning.

When I say I’ve been used, I mean it literally and figuratively. Used for money. Used for emotional connection. Used for sex. Used as a mirror. Used as a vent. Used as a therapist. Used as a temporary home someone could crawl into when they were lonely—then abandon as soon as they felt warm again. Used as a canvas for someone’s fantasy of “the perfect partner,” until the fantasy required actual responsibility, actual consistency, actual care. And then suddenly I’m too much. Or I’m too intense. Or I’m inconvenient. Or I’m “not what they’re ready for.” Or they just go silent and let my mind do the work of haunting itself.

The most devastating part isn’t even the leaving.

It’s the rewriting.

The way someone can speak like a poet about your soul and then act like you’re disposable the moment their appetite changes. The way they can make promises with the confidence of someone who believes promises are toys. The way they can hold your tenderness, admire it, want it, benefit from it—and then abandon you with no explanation as if your tenderness was never a living thing, as if it didn’t cost you anything to keep it alive.

So my mind does what traumatized minds do: it starts forging laws out of pain, trying to make a universe where this makes sense. It starts producing sentences that feel like they could be truth because they would at least be stable truth.

Real love isn’t real. Not for me. I don’t deserve love. I am made to be used. Humanity is worthless. No one truly loves. Everyone is just using everyone. It’s all fake, it’s all a game.

There’s a particular kind of despair that comes when you’ve tried to be good and the world keeps rewarding you with cruelty. It makes cynicism feel like wisdom. It makes isolation feel like safety. It makes withdrawal feel like the only honest response to a species that keeps proving—over and over—that so many people will say anything to get what they want, and then disappear when it’s time to give something back.

If all of those sentences were true, then there’s a “solution” that appears in the mind like a bleak little door: completely isolate from all people, quit my job, withdraw all my money, drive until I run out of gas. Not as some dramatic final act, but as a refusal. As an “I’m done participating in this” kind of disappearance.

And that’s the terrifying thing about heartbreak when it collides with overwhelm: it doesn’t always show up as crying. Sometimes it shows up as wanting to stop existing socially. Wanting to stop being reachable. Wanting to stop being someone who can be used.

Because I’m tired.

The endless compassion in me is saying it plainly now: I’m tired, I’m angry, and I’m done.

The lover and the protector in me feel the most betrayed. That’s the word. Betrayed. Not just hurt. Not just disappointed. Betrayed. Because the lover in me offered a rare thing: presence, honesty, depth, care. The protector in me tried to build safe containers—communication, consent, clarity, checking in, showing up, being intentional. And people walked into that like it was a free hotel and left without paying, without even saying goodbye, without even acknowledging there was a person inside the building.

My wife is crying. She is crying and saying she can’t stand seeing so many people killing the parts of me that she loved. The tenderness. The warmth. The hope. The kindness. The part of me that used to meet the world with open hands instead of clenched fists. She’s watching me change, not into a monster, but into someone colder. Someone more suspicious. Someone who flinches at praise because praise has become a prelude to abandonment.

And I don’t know what to do about it, because I don’t want her to hurt more. I’m afraid to ask what she needs because I don’t want to pull her deeper into the gravity well I’m currently living in. I don’t want her to feel responsible for repairing damage she didn’t cause. And the truth—ugly, blunt, humiliating—is that there is unfortunately nothing she could give me that would instantly mend this breaking. Not because her love isn’t enough, but because this isn’t a “not enough love” problem.

This is a “too many people used love as a weapon” problem.

This is what happens when your nervous system learns a pattern: closeness becomes danger, praise becomes bait, affection becomes leverage, silence becomes punishment. That’s what it feels like. Like my body is learning to distrust the very things I want most.

And sometimes the only warning sign I notice is so simple it almost feels petty to say out loud, but it’s not petty. It’s a mirror held up to reality: when I send them poetry, music, blogs, or art I’ve done, they don’t even look. Not because they forgot once. Not because they were having a rough week. Because they don’t care. Because the “me” they want is the me that services them—sexually, emotionally, conversationally. The me that gives. The me that performs warmth on command.

But the “me” that creates? The “me” that bleeds onto paper? The “me” that tries to translate pain into something meaningful? That version gets ignored, because that version requires reverence, not consumption. It requires patience. It requires curiosity. It requires seeing me as a whole person instead of a vending machine.

So yes, I feel used. Worthless. Abused. More. Because when you are repeatedly treated as replaceable, your brain starts doing math with your own value. It starts tallying: if people can disappear this easily, maybe I’m not real to them. Maybe I never was. Maybe the only thing that’s real is what I provide.

And that is the moment where something in me starts dying—not because I don’t have love left, but because I can’t keep offering it with no protection. I can’t keep giving it out like it’s free candy in a world that keeps proving it will take the whole bowl and laugh at you for refilling it.

Here’s the part where I need to be honest about boundaries, because I can feel my future self being shaped right now, and I don’t want that shaping to be done by people who harm me.

If I believed I am not worthless, my boundaries would be ruthless. Not cruel. Ruthless. There’s a difference. Cruelty is harm for harm’s sake. Ruthlessness is self-protection without apology.

One chance only. After that—unless you have a damn good explanation—you’re gone. Sudden lack of communication without explanation? Gone. Sudden pull back with no explanation? Gone. Emotional whiplash with no accountability? Gone. Love-bombing followed by confusion and silence? Gone. Any of it.

Because I am not a training ground for someone who hasn’t learned how to be human with other humans yet. I am not a practice partner. I am not an emotional rehearsal space. I am not a resource you consume until you feel better.

For me, being wanted looks like consistency. Daily messages. Good morning texts and good night texts. Meaningful deep conversation. Actual curiosity about the real me. The kind of attention that doesn’t vanish the moment sex is no longer on the table. The kind of care that doesn’t require me to beg for basic presence. The kind of love that shows up in the boring places—the “how was your day,” the “I saw this and thought of you,” the “I’m here,” the “tell me more,” the “I want to know you,” the “I didn’t disappear, I’m just overwhelmed, and I’ll be back at ___.”

At this point, any relationship would need to constantly reassure me they love me in some way, and actually show it, because the second they don’t, I’ll pull back completely. Not as manipulation. Not as punishment. As survival. As my body going, “We know this story. We know how it ends. Get out before it happens again.”

I hate that. I hate that I’ve been pushed into a place where love feels like something that must be proven repeatedly just to be believed. I hate that my chest has learned to go hollow before my mind can talk me down. I hate that I’m at a point where I’m leaning harder on medication just to avoid autistic meltdowns because the overwhelm of heartbreak feels like it could crack my entire nervous system in half.

But there’s another truth under all of this, and it’s quieter, and I’m trying to hold onto it with bloody hands:

The part of me that’s dying might not be love.

It might be access.

It might be the version of me that kept offering unconditional availability to people who had not earned it. The version of me that mistook intensity for intimacy. The version of me that heard beautiful words and assumed they meant beautiful character. The version of me that kept opening the door wider when the first sign of danger was already standing in the doorway.

Maybe what’s dying is not tenderness, but naïveté. Not compassion, but the belief that compassion requires self-sacrifice. Not love itself, but the idea that love should be given without conditions to people who treat conditions like chains.

Because I don’t actually want to become someone who hates humanity. That sentence—“humanity is worthless”—it isn’t who I am. It’s what pain says when it wants to be the only voice in the room. The truth is that I love humanity so much it makes me furious. I love people so much it makes me grieve what we do to each other. I believe in goodness so much it feels like a personal betrayal every time someone chooses cruelty instead.

That’s the curse of having a conscience: you don’t just feel your own suffering. You feel the waste of it. The wasted potential. The wasted tenderness. The wasted chance to be kind.

I want to keep loving. I do. I want to keep being the person Laura fell in love with—the warm husband, the gentle protector, the one who tries to be good even when he’s bleeding. But I also want to stop handing knives to people who have already shown me they like to cut.

I want a love that doesn’t demand I shrink. A love that doesn’t make promises like fireworks and then vanish like smoke. A love that looks at my art and sees me. A love that doesn’t treat my vulnerability like a bargaining chip. A love that shows up daily, not only when it’s convenient or sexy or exciting. A love that speaks with actions, not just poetry.

And if you’re reading this and you recognize yourself on the other side of the pattern—if you’re someone who says beautiful things and then disappears—I want you to understand something: you are not just “setting a boundary” or “taking space.” Sometimes, what you are doing is leaving someone alone in a burning building you helped light. Sometimes, you’re not walking away from a relationship—you’re walking away from the consequences of how you treated a human being.

I am safe right now. I am writing this because writing is the only way I know how to keep the tender parts of me from turning into stone. I am trying to turn the hollowness in my chest into language, because language is where I have always rebuilt myself when the world collapses.

And maybe that’s the last thing I’ll say, the thing I’m trying to believe as I type this with shaking hands:

If love is dying in me, then I will grieve it like it mattered.

But if what’s dying is my willingness to be used, then maybe this is not a death.

Maybe it’s a boundary being born.

Maybe it’s self-respect, finally arriving like a door that locks.

Maybe it’s the part of me that still loves—learning how to guard the hearth without extinguishing the fire.

And if I have any prayer left, it’s this:

Let me keep the warmth.

Let me lose only the access.

Let me become un-useable to the people who feed on tenderness.

And still—still—let me remain a dragon who knows how to love.