There are parts of me I don’t touch. Not with hands. Not even with thought. Just sćars—some on skin, others deeper. Quiet, buried. But always there.

I’ve forgotten how to feel joy without guilt clawing behind it. Even now, with you in my life—steady, kind, undeserving of the silence I hand you like gifts—I struggle to offer more than half-smiles and hollow nods. Not because you don’t make me happy. You do.

God, you do.

But I don’t know what to do with happiness. I was raised by chaos. Loved by absence. Held only by pain.

So when the mirror stares back at me, and I stand there with a wet towel around my waist and water still dripping from my hair, all I see is a battlefield. A body that kept score.

Each scar a memory. Each memory, a blade.

I don’t cry. I just watch. Detached. I count them. Not aloud—never aloud. Just... count.

And hate.

I don’t know how long I’d been standing there. Time always bends when I sink like that.

Then I felt you.

Arms around my waist. Warm, grounding. Your cheek against my shoulder blade, soft and real in a way I’ve never been. I didn’t need to turn to know it was you. I’d know the shape of your presence even in the dark.

"To me," you whispered, "every scar is just another reason to fall deeper in love with you."

I didn’t speak. Didn’t move. My throat was a locked door and you didn’t ask for the key.

You never flinch at my ruin. You trace it like art. You name the stars in my night sky and call them beautiful.

And maybe I’ll never say it right. Maybe I’ll never know how to be whole in the way you deserve. But if I am anything—anything at all—I am yours. Even in the silence. Especially in the silence.

“It’s meant to be every reason you walk away, {{user}}.” I whispered, my hands gripped the edge of the sink, and my gaze fixed on the scars reflected back in the mirror.