“You Either Learn the Game or Get played.”

The Google definition of soft is:
Easy to mold, cut, compress, or fold. Not hard or firm to the touch.

And growing up as someone who’s naturally soft, I realized—that’s exactly how the world tries to treat me.
Like something it can shape.
Bend.
Use.

People don’t just misread softness—they target it.
They see it as pliability. As a lack of resistance.
As an invitation.

To manipulate.
To dominate.
To test how far they can go.

They don’t see softness as ease. They see it as access.
And the moment they notice you’re open-hearted, gentle, or emotionally present—
they assume you’re too unguarded to protect yourself.
Too absorbent to push back.
Too tender to strike.

But here’s the thing:
The world is loud. Cruel. Aggressive.
People are hostile, calculated, sometimes unhinged.
And in environments like that, you’re not asked to toughen up—
you’re forced to.

That’s what “strength” is supposed to look like, right?
Mirror the environment.
Match the energy.
Survive by becoming what almost destroyed you.

That’s what people believe protection means.
To harden.
To tough it out.
To bark louder than whoever’s barking at you.

“You Pussy”

And let me give you a real example of that logic in action.
I grew up a Black girl during the Bad Girls Club era.
And now there’s Baddies, a spiritual successor to the same mindset:
chaos as currency.
Aggression as identity.
Survival as spectacle.

Those spaces?
They were built like battlefields.
You didn’t get to just exist—you had to perform dominance.

The louder you were, the more control you were seen to have.
The more explosive you were, the more power you were perceived to hold.
And if you were soft?
You were the target.
The easy one.
The one to push until she snapped.

Because in rooms like that, peace makes people itch.
Calm gets mocked.
Kindness gets tested.
And softness?
Softness is mistaken for submission—
and when it doesn’t submit, they try to break it.

Let me be clear:
I would’ve never lasted in those environments.
Not because I lack strength.
Not because I can’t defend myself.
But because those spaces require something I refuse to give—
a constant performance of aggression just to prove you’re untouchable.

That’s not strength.
That’s spiritual violence.
That’s soul-deep exhaustion.

Yes, you can be soft and still defend yourself.
You can clap back. You can fight back. You can stand your ground.
But let’s talk about what that actually costs.

Because when you live in a space where your softness is constantly challenged—
where people are always testing your threshold—
you start spending energy fighting battles you never started.
You get pulled out of your natural rhythm,
forced to bark just to make people back up.
Then you spend the rest of the day trying to calm your nervous system,
trying to soothe the tension in your chest,
trying to find your center again.

That’s not power.
That’s trauma reenactment.
That’s spiritual damage wearing the mask of strength.

And I’m not signing up for that.
Not to be seen.
Not for the illusion of respect.
Not to survive in rooms that were never built for me in the first place.

Because here’s the truth—
if the only way to survive a space is to stop being yourself,
then that space is not a space worth surviving.

Let’s not even talk about the physical toll.
Living in a constant state of hostility rewires your body.
That kind of tension gets stored.
In your jaw. In your gut. In your shoulders.
Whether you notice it or not.

This isn’t just about mood.
This is about health.
About peace.
About longevity.

I’m not saying toughness is bad.
Toughness is resilience.
It’s knowing how to protect yourself when you need to.
It’s valuable. Necessary. Sacred in its own way.

But toughness and softness are not opposites.
They’re not competing.
They serve different functions.

The opposite of tough is weak.
But soft?
Soft doesn’t sit on that scale.

Softness is something else entirely.
It’s not a measure of what you can’t handle.
It’s a reflection of what you choose not to become.

Still, people don’t understand that.
They see someone gentle and assume they’re fragile.
They hear a quiet voice and assume there’s no fire behind it.
They assume softness means you’re easy to mold, cut, compress, or fold.

But here’s how I see it:

If someone has the kind of power over you that makes you harden—
so much that you forget how to be gentle with yourself,
forget how to feel peace in your own body—
then that, to me, is its own kind of weakness.

That’s not survival.
That’s self-abandonment.
That’s walking away from your own spirit just to stay in rooms that treat you like a doormat unless you bark like a dog.

So no—
I’m not here to out-scream anyone.
I’m not here to keep proving my softness has bite.
I’m not wasting my breath begging people to respect what they’re too chaotic to recognize.

I’ll stand on business when I have to.
But I will not live in chaos just to be seen.
Because my softness is not a liability.
It’s a boundary.

And if you mistake it for fragility—
that’s your misunderstanding to carry, not mine.

And just so we’re clear—
I’m speaking from the soft girl experience.

There are people who thrive off that heat.
They like the chaos. The conflict. The energy of the clash.
They feed off it.
They shine in it.

This post isn’t written for them.

This is for the ones who never signed up for the war.
Who carry peace in their chest but have had to sharpen their edges just to survive the room.
This is for the ones who are learning that softness isn’t what makes them vulnerable—
it’s what keeps them whole.

Calm Is Not Compliance

Now I’ve never been in a fight.
But I’ve still had to defend myself.

Not with fists.
With presence.

With boundaries.

I’ve dealt with men who mistook my softness for submission.
And no—these weren’t innocent misunderstandings.
These were calculated misreadings.

They interpreted my care as obedience.
My peace as permission.
My gentleness as something to manipulate, not honor.

They’d poke me—emotionally—just to see if I’d break.
They wanted to feel powerful enough to pull me out of character.

They mistook emotional reactivity for love.
Used chaos as a test for connection.

And when they couldn’t reach me through peace,
they tried to drag me into their storm.

They wanted me to act “crazy” over them—
to lose myself as proof that I cared.
To burn down my own calm just to make them feel important.

Meanwhile, they were basking in the very energy I was giving them—
that same gentleness they kept trying to provoke.

They didn’t want to match my peace.
They just wanted to feed off it.

They relied on the softness they tried to insult.

Sounds toxic, right?
It is.

But my softness saved me.

It wasn’t my downfall.
It was my boundary.
My protection.
My discernment.

They wanted chaos. I stayed centered.
They wanted drama. I gave them presence.
They wanted performance. I stayed real.

I knew the game.
I just didn’t play it.

That’s real power.

Did I get frustrated? Of course.
Did I confront them? Gently, yes.
Because I did love them.

And confrontation can be soft.
Love can include boundaries.
Gentleness doesn’t mean silence.

I never yelled.
I gave them space to figure themselves out.
Because I’m understanding.
Not weak.

Let’s not confuse compassion for foolishness.
Let’s not gaslight ourselves for having a heart.

We’re all fucked up in some way—including me.
So I don’t take their chaos personally.

Some people are fighting demons.
Some are the demon.
Some are trying to heal.

I just pay attention to the nuance—
and the character of who I choose to love.

I stayed sometimes.
Because I hoped.
And that’s a reflection for another post.

But here’s what matters:
I never gave them what they were looking for.

In the end, I left with clarity, growth, and my dignity intact.
They were left confused.
Because they thought I was forever.
They thought calm meant compliant.
They thought I’d break before I’d walk.

They were mistaken.

Trapped in the illusion that love gave them control.

I gave them something they still yearn for.
But because they couldn’t cherish it,
they’ll never experience it again—

Not in others.
And definitely not in themselves.

Move Smarter, Not Harder

I’m not interested in being the kind of woman who has to fight—physically, emotionally, spiritually—just to prove her worth.
Not to men.
Not to women.
Not to the world.

I’m not entering rooms with my fists up or my heart on trial.
I don’t need to prove to other women that I’m not the one to play with—
because I don’t attract that kind of energy in the first place.
My peace filters the room before I even speak.

And if a woman is mad at me?
That’s her emotional labor to unpack, not mine.
I’m not carrying what doesn’t belong to me.
I’m not losing sleep over projections.
I’m not giving energy to things that don’t hold value.
I’m chillin—for real.

I don’t need to prove my love to a man by falling apart.
By yelling.
By chasing.
By making a scene.
By becoming abusive or unrecognizable—just to show I care.

Especially when he’s not proving anything to me.
Especially when he’s not protecting my peace, nurturing my softness, or meeting my presence with presence.

And to the women who do that—
who crash out just to prove they feel something—please stop.

They are not moved.
They are entertained.
They laugh about your breakdowns behind your back.
They wear your chaos like a trophy.
They confuse your unraveling with love, because that’s the only form of intimacy they understand.

They are not empowered by your softness.
They are emboldened by your pain.

And I refuse to lose my essence for anyone who treats femininity like a tool—
a weapon to control, seduce, and shame—just to feed a starving ego that’s too weak to hold real love.

My softness is not a stage.
My peace is not a playground.
My spirit is not available for negotiation.

If loving me doesn’t bring you peace,
you were never meant to hold me.

Because I’m not hard to love—
I’m just not made for those at war with themselves.