Soft Girl Era? Please. I Been Her.

Let me just say it straight up. I’ve always been soft.
Not performatively. Not when it’s convenient. Not because I had to be.
Soft in the way some people are tall, or left-handed, or born under a certain moon.
It’s not a choice I made. It’s the material I came in.

I didn’t earn it. I didn’t adopt it. I didn’t try to become it.
No one sat me down and taught me how. I just… was.

I don’t know why, and I don’t know how.
All I know is—through every season of my life—I’ve chosen softness. Every time.
My softness was so natural it was invisible to me—like breathing.
It lived in the pauses between my words, in the way I held silence,
in the way I listened so closely it turned into a form of knowing.

At first, it wasn’t conscious. It was instinct.

It didn’t feel like anything remarkable.
Not until the world started reacting to it.
And after living a few lives, watching how the world moves…
how people behave…
how cruelty disguises itself as power—
I now choose it deliberately. With clarity. With intent.

Not just to honor myself.
But to spite the world.

Because life has a way of showing you who you are by showing you who you’re not.
By surrounding you with contrast—louder voices, sharper edges, faster paces.
By putting you in situations where softness either disappears…
or decides to stay.

And I stayed.
Even when it got misunderstood.
Even when it got taken advantage of.
Even when it got mistaken for something it wasn’t.

I never once thought of it as weakness.
Because it never felt weak.
It felt honest.
And I’ve never been interested in trading honesty for acceptance.

Softness, to me, isn’t a personality trait.
It’s not a role I play or a way I act.
It’s not a brand or an aesthetic.
It’s a state. A frequency. A foundation.
It’s the atmosphere I move through—deliberate and unforced.

At first, it was just instinct.
But now, it’s a decision.
Now I choose it with full awareness.
With clarity. With pride. With rebellion.

Because in a world that rewards dominance and detachment,
choosing to stay soft is not submission.
It’s defiance.

And I carry it like a sword.

The Cost: Filtered. Contained. Unexpressed.

When I was younger, people called me polite. Quiet. Shy. Sensitive.
I was the soft-spoken one. The observant one. The gentle one.
But those weren’t just traits.
They were armor.

From a young age, I was emotionally attuned long before I was given space to be emotionally expressive.
I didn’t take up space loudly—but I felt everything deeply.
I didn’t speak often—but I noticed everything.

I’ve never been rowdy, confrontational, or loud.
And when I tried to be, I got punished for it.
Still, I admired those traits in others—especially people my age.

There was a fire in them that I envied.
Not because I lacked fire.
But because I didn’t feel safe enough to let mine out.

I used to watch them—
say whatever they wanted, laugh without filtering themselves,
take up space like the world was made for them.
There was a rawness to their freedom.
Unfiltered. Unapologetic.
And a part of me wanted that.

Not to be reckless. But to be real.
To say the thing without scanning the room first.
To move through life without editing myself for survival.

Now, at 25, I think I’ve only let that fire out once or twice.
And only in moments of pure anger.

When it finally came through, it didn’t ask for permission.
It wasn’t polished or careful.
It was raw and loud and sharp and unrelenting.
And I’ll be honest—I liked it.
It made me feel alive. Powerful. Uncontained.

But it also scared me.
Because when you spend your whole life being calm and composed,
rage doesn’t feel like release—it feels like losing yourself.
Not just in front of others, but within yourself too.

So most of the time, when emotions run high—especially during conflict—
I either cry or go silent.

Crying doesn’t scare me.
It’s just energy moving.
It’s the aftermath of too much feeling crashing into a body that tries to stay composed.

What annoys me is how people treat it.
As if crying is weakness.
As if being moved is failure.

But they don’t see what it takes to not explode.
To hold yourself together when your body wants to shatter.
To feel everything and still keep your voice steady.

Silence, though—that’s different.
Silence, for me, is a threshold.
It means I’ve reached capacity.
It’s not peace. It’s pressure.
It’s not surrender. It’s survival.

It means I’m doing everything in my power not to turn into someone I won’t recognize.
So if you ever see me go still, quiet, and blank—
know that what you’re seeing is not weakness.
It’s control.

Soft: Core, Not Costume

People define words based on how they experience them.
I’m not here to debate meaning.
I’m here to honor the nuance.
Because softness, in my world, stands on its own.

But if I had to translate it into another word, I’d choose gentleness—
something intentional, present, unforced.

I’d describe it like premium silk—something you melt into.

But I don’t melt into it.
It’s not an action. It’s not a place I go.

Softness is the silk.
And I am the silk.
Smooth, quiet, unbothered by edges.
Unapologetically what it is.

So no—
I’m not soft because I don’t know how to be hard.
I’m soft because I know exactly what hardness costs.
And I’ve decided I’m not willing to pay that price to be palatable, protected, or powerful.

Because I don’t need to be hard to be whole.
I don’t need to shout to be heard.
I don’t need to harden just to survive.

I survived by staying soft.

And that softness has never diluted me.
It’s defined me.
It’s shaped how I move, how I love, how I carry myself,
and how I see through the noise of this world.

So let it be known—
if you ever try to measure me by the sharpness of my edges,
you’ll miss the depth of my center.

I was never made to cut.
I was made to hold.
And softness is how I hold myself, and everything I’ve ever survived,
without becoming the very thing I ran from.

Softness is my boundary.
My birthright.
My language.
My power.

And I will not trade it.
Not for comfort. Not for safety. Not for belonging.

Because this softness?
It is not weakness.
It is legacy.

And I carry it—with intention.