Frost on the Inside

On October 5, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

She had always worried about the flame.

How high it rose.
How hungrily it caught.
Whether one careless breath
would set the curtains burning.

So she kept the wick trimmed,
the glass clean,
the light small enough
to be forgiven.

Then morning showed her
what the darkness had concealed.

Frost on the inside of the window.

She stood before it,
watching the little flame
bend toward the glass.

All that heat,
and winter had barely noticed.

She could burn brighter.
She knew how.
There was enough of her left
to make a beautiful blaze.

But she could see now
how it would end:
the room still cold,
the wax gone,
a thin thread of smoke
where the light had been.

For a while,
she did nothing.

It was a small grief,
watching something burn so faithfully
and understanding
what it could never change.

By evening,
she moved the candle
away from the window.

Her hands shook a little.

She had wanted
to see the frost melt.

In The Midnight Hour

On September 26, 2026September 26, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

In the midnight hour,
when the world has gone quiet
and moonlight spills across the sheets,
their hands would speak first.

Hers would slide across his chest,
fingertips tracing heat through darkness,
nails dragging slowly down his skin
as if touching him could quiet
every night she had ached to.

His would find her waist,
pull her hard against him,
then roam over curves
made softer by shadow,
holding her with the hunger
of a man who had missed
the feeling of her beneath his hands.

Hers would grip his shoulders,
then wander lower.
His would tighten around her hips,
keeping her close.
And somewhere between teasing
and trembling,
their touch would become less about wanting
and more about finally.

Finally, you’re here.
Finally, I can touch you.
Finally, I don’t have to imagine.

There would be tenderness,
but midnight has never been innocent.

Hands gripping.
Palms exploring.
Fingers teasing.
Nails pressing into heated skin
when longing became too much
to hold quietly.

Her hands would whisper,
I want you.

His would answer,
Then come closer.

And she would.

Into the heat of him.
Into the hands that held her
as though they remembered
every place they had missed.

As though even now
there were not enough inches of skin,
not enough touches,
not enough midnight
to make up for the distance.

Somewhere between midnight
and whatever hour comes after desire,
words would surrender completely.

There would only be moonlight,
bare skin,
heat,
ragged breath,
hands clutching each other,
and that beautiful, desperate tenderness
of two people finally touching
what they had spent
too many lonely nights
missing in the dark.

The Things She Will Never Tell Him

On September 24, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

There are things she will never tell him.

Not because they are untrue,
but because some truths
are not meant to be placed
in another person’s hands.

He drew the lines in the sand.
Clear ones.
Necessary ones.

She understood them.
She agreed to them.
She has never asked him
to redraw a single one.

But boundaries do not stop feelings
from growing wild beneath them.

They only teach the heart
where it is allowed to speak.

So she keeps certain words
behind her teeth.

She will never tell him
how often something ordinary
makes her think of him.

A song.
A smell.
A turn in the weather.
The particular blue of an evening sky.
A stupid joke she knows would make him laugh.

She will never tell him
how many times she has reached for her phone,
written half a sentence,
then erased it
because wanting to share her world with him
does not mean
she is entitled to enter his.

She will never tell him
that sometimes she misses him
before he has even left.

That she has learned the weight
of a closing door.
The sound of footsteps leaving.

The strange silence afterward
when a room still feels full of someone
who is no longer there.

She will never tell him
that his absence has a shape.
That sometimes
she can feel it beside her.

She will never tell him
that she has memorized things
she never intended to learn.

The cadence of his voice.
The changes in his breathing.
The look that comes before the touch.
The quiet ways he says things
without saying anything at all.

She will never tell him
how carefully she collects those moments.

Not as promises.
Never as promises.

She knows better than to turn
what he gives freely
into something he never offered.

But as small pieces of time
she is allowed to keep.

She will never ask
what she means to him
on the nights when curiosity
becomes almost unbearable.

She will not ask him
to name this.

She will not ask
whether he thinks of her
when she is not there.

She will not ask
whether some song,
some scent,
some empty stretch of road
ever brings her suddenly
into his mind.

She will not ask
if leaving is ever difficult for him too.

Some questions are dangerous
not because of the answers,
but because asking them
changes the shape of the room.

And she promised herself
she would never make him
defend the boundaries
he trusted her to respect.

So she doesn’t.

She will never tell him
that sometimes
she wants terribly ordinary things.

Nothing dramatic.
Nothing stolen from another life.

Just another hour.
Drinks when nobody is watching the clock.

A conversation that does not have
an ending waiting for it.

To fall asleep beside him
without knowing that eventually
one of them has to get up.

To wake once
and not immediately remember
where the edges are.

She will never tell him
that she wonders what it would feel like
to exist beside him
without measuring time.

And perhaps the hardest truth
is that she does not need
those things to happen
to want them.

She has learned
that desire and demand
are not the same thing.

Neither are love
and possession.

Neither are longing
and entitlement.

A heart can ache for something
and still leave it untouched.

So she honors the lines.

Even when they hurt.
Especially when they hurt.

Because he never promised her forever.
He never promised her more.

He never asked her
to build a future
from moments that belonged
only to the present.

And she refuses
to punish him
for promises
he never made.

But there is one thing
she wishes she could tell him.

One thing that rises sometimes
so fiercely
she has to swallow it whole.

That whatever this is,
whatever name it will never have,
whatever place it occupies
between what is permitted
and what is impossible,

it mattered.
It matters.
He matters.

More than she expected.
More than she planned.
Perhaps more than is convenient.

And she does not need him
to do anything with that truth.

She does not need an answer.
She does not need reassurance.
She does not need him
to cross a single line.

She only wishes,
sometimes,
that she could place those words
gently between them
and let them exist.

You mean more to me than I will ever say.

Not as a request.
Not as a claim.

Not as a reason
for anything to change.

Just as the quietest truth
she has ever carried.

But she will never tell him.

Because sometimes
respecting a boundary
means accepting
that the most honest words
you have ever known

will live their entire lives
inside you.

The King Size Bed

On September 24, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

A king-size bed should never remain perfectly made,
not one worth remembering.
It should know the pull of sheets from tightly tucked corners,
the careless tumble of pillows onto the floor,
and the slow collapse of everything once arranged.

It should know anticipation before it ever knows touch,
the dip of the mattress beneath shifting weight,
the warmth of skin against cool cotton,
and that suspended moment when the body already understands
what has not yet happened.

It should know the teasing brush of fingertips,
the lingering press of lips against waiting skin,
the soft scrape of teeth followed by tenderness,
and the exquisite patience of discovering
how many ways a body can ask for more without speaking.

It should know laughter between kisses,
because desire was never meant to be solemn all the time.
There should be playful struggles for the better pillow,
blankets stolen and stolen back,
and bodies rolling across acres of mattress
until no one remembers which side belonged to whom.

It should know hunger too,
the kind that begins with kisses that start slowly and deepen,
with hands that wander without urgency
and fingertips tracing paths that change the rhythm of breathing
before anything else has had the chance to change.

It should know what happens when thought finally becomes quiet,
when there is no wondering how a body looks from across the room,
no instinct to hide softness, scars, age, curves, or imperfection,
because desire has a way of making all those careful measurements
feel suddenly and wonderfully irrelevant.

There is a particular freedom in being wanted while completely unguarded,
in allowing the body to become something felt rather than evaluated,
something inhabited rather than observed.
Perhaps that is one of the most intimate things a bed can hold:
the moment someone stops watching themselves exist.

It should know the delicious weight of bodies pressed together,
the arch and stretch, the pull and surrender,
the quiet sounds that escape when words are no longer useful,
and the beautiful disorder created when instinct is given enough room
to become louder than restraint.

It should know surrender without defeat
and vulnerability without fear.
It should know the kind of nakedness that has very little to do with clothing
and everything to do with allowing the guarded places
to remain uncovered.

Because the deepest intimacy is not simply being touched.
It is not having to disappear while being touched.
It is remaining fully present inside the body,
without shrinking from pleasure or apologizing for wanting it,
and discovering that desire does not always demand a performance.

It should know how passion ruins perfectly good sheets,
how pillows disappear and blankets twist around ankles,
how the fitted sheet somehow comes loose from one corner
and no one gives a damn,
because some experiences were never meant to remain tidy.

There should be evidence afterward.
Not proof for anyone else, but the quiet archaeology of pleasure:
wrinkled sheets, displaced pillows, warmth still trapped beneath blankets,
and small impressions in the mattress where bodies had forgotten
there was an entire world beyond its edges.

And when all that king-sized mischief has finally spent itself,
the bed should know tenderness too.
It should know warm skin cooling beneath rumpled sheets,
lazy fingertips drawing meaningless patterns,
and soft kisses placed wherever they happen to land.

It should know a blanket being pulled higher
and a pillow recovered from the floor.
It should know that touch can remain after hunger has quieted,
when there is nothing left to chase, prove, earn, or satisfy
and nothing more is being asked.

Because tenderness has its own kind of nakedness.
It asks for no performance and offers no distraction.
It is what remains when urgency has exhausted itself
and there is only the vulnerable quiet
of simply being there.

Perhaps that is when a king-size bed becomes most intimate,
not while it is being conquered from one edge to the other,
but afterward, when all that enormous space exists
and there is still no desire
to move very far apart.

The quiet comfort of staying exactly where everything ended
becomes its own form of pleasure.
Breathing slows, muscles soften, and the world begins returning,
but for a little while longer there is nowhere else
worth being.

A king-size bed was never meant for sleeping politely on opposite sides.
It was made for taking up space and making a mess,
for pleasure and laughter, heat and softness, restlessness and rest,
and for everything the body spends its daylight hours
trying so carefully to contain.

It was made for the desires that are edited before they are spoken,
for tenderness that sometimes feels more dangerous than lust,
for the need to be touched without being consumed,
and for the rare permission to exist completely
without having to make oneself smaller.

It was made for waking the next morning to tangled sheets,
missing pillows, and the unmistakable evidence
that somewhere during the night every inch of that enormous bed
had been put to very good use,
even if the most important thing that happened there could never be seen.

Because maybe the real luxury of a king-size bed
has never been how much room it gives for bodies to wander.
Maybe its greatest indulgence is having enough space
to retreat to opposite edges
and discovering there is no desire to go.

Maybe it is having all that room for distance
and leaving most of it untouched.

Because after the laughter, the hunger, the heat, and the beautiful mess,
after the sheets have been ruined and the breathing has softened,
what remains is something quieter than desire
and somehow more revealing.

The bed has enough room for distance.

And still,
closeness wins.

Designed to Be Alone

On September 15, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

Perhaps there was an error in the blueprint,
some quiet flaw folded beneath her ribs,
a door drawn without a handle,
a room built for no one to enter.

She was given hands that knew how to hold
and a heart that mistook leaving for ritual.
Everyone who touched her left something behind,
but no one ever stayed to claim it.

There were always signs.

An empty chair facing her own.
A second pillow untouched by morning.
Her name fading from the mouths
that once made it sound like a promise.

She learned not to question the pattern.
Some things are born beneath a dark star.
Some creatures are made to wander,
mistaking shelter for home.

Still, she opened whenever someone knocked.
Still, she let warmth cross the threshold,
knowing every flame eventually remembers
it belongs somewhere else.

They called her strong
when she stopped reaching after them.
They never saw the graveyard of almosts
she carried beneath her tongue.

At night, the house settled around her
like something alive and familiar.
The walls never promised to remain,
yet somehow, they always did.

Perhaps loneliness was not the punishment.
Perhaps it was the purpose.
The one thing shaped precisely for her,
waiting before she ever arrived.

And somewhere beneath the ache,
beneath every hand that loosened its hold,
a terrible certainty continued to breathe:

She was designed to be alone.

The Empty Side

On September 11, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

The room is too quiet tonight,
not peaceful, not lonely exactly,
just empty in all the places
her mind keeps putting him.

His shoes by the door.
His watch on the nightstand.
His voice somewhere behind her
while she pretends not to notice
how easily he changes the air in a room.

None of it is memory.

That may be the cruelest part.

She has never fallen asleep beside him,
never woken to find him still there,
never known the ordinary intimacy
of sharing four walls with him
when there was nowhere either of them
needed to be.

So tonight, she invents it.

There is too much bed for one body,
too much cool linen against warm skin,
too much untouched space beside her
where she lets herself imagine
the weight of him,
the heat of him,
the quiet certainty of his presence.

She wonders what it would feel like
to have him here without a clock watching,
without the inevitable moment
when one of them has to leave.

What would he look like
standing in the doorway of this room,
knowing the night belonged to them?

Would he toss his keys on the dresser?
Leave his shoes beside hers?
Would he climb into bed
and pull her into the space beside him
as though she had always belonged there?

She closes her eyes
and builds him from wanting.

The sound of his voice when it drops.
The look that makes something inside her
go deliciously still.
The gravity of him,
even from miles away,
pulling at a body that knows exactly
who it wants.

She imagines looking at him
from across the bed,
the lights low,
the whole night stretched before them,
and knowing she would not have to explain
the hunger written across her face.

He would know.

Perhaps that is what makes
the fantasy so intoxicating.

It is not simply wanting his body.

It is wanting the impossible luxury
of his time.

Midnight.
Two in the morning.
The dark hours when there is nothing
to steal him away.

To know what it feels like
when a visit does not have an ending
already waiting inside it.

To reach across unfamiliar sheets
and find him there.

And later,
when desire finally gives way
to exhaustion,
to imagine the strangest intimacy of all:

sleep.

His breathing in the darkness.
His warmth beside her.
No goodbye yet.

Just him.

Just her.

Just this room,
and for once,
more hours than they know
what to do with.

She opens her eyes.

The other side of the bed is untouched.

Of course it is.

But somewhere between midnight
and sleep,
she smiles at the empty space anyway,

because for a little while
she can pretend
she knows what it is
to have an entire night
with him.

The Quiet Occupation

On September 8, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

There are people who pass through the mind
like weather through an open window,
noticed for a moment, then gone,
leaving nothing behind but the faintest change in air.
And then there are those who linger,
without invitation, without explanation,
somehow becoming part of the landscape
before anyone notices they have stayed.

It happens in the smallest places.
A song playing somewhere in the distance,
something ridiculous tucked into a shop window,
a turn of phrase overheard in passing,
the particular color of an evening sky.
Ordinary things become little messengers,
carrying a name that was never spoken
to a place it probably shouldn’t go.

There is something almost absurd about it,
the amount of room one person can occupy
without ever asking for the space.
Whole conversations happen in silence,
memories wander in without knocking,
and imaginary moments grow beside real ones
until it becomes difficult to remember
who invited whom in the first place.

Perhaps everyone carries someone like this,
quietly tucked between the responsibilities of living,
appearing between errands and deadlines,
between waking and finally falling asleep.
Someone who would never guess how often
the world accidentally points in their direction,
or how many things have been mentally set aside
with the simple thought, they would like this.

There is no great tragedy in it.
No declaration waiting to be made,
no expectation demanding an answer.
Some things do not need to become anything
in order to matter more than they should.
They simply exist in that unnamed country
between affection and restraint,
where knowing better does very little good.

Maybe that is why certain thoughts stay quiet.
Not because they are shameful or untrue,
but because speaking them would change their shape.
A harmless tenderness can become a question,
a question can become a complication,
and suddenly something that asked for nothing
has been dragged beneath a light
it was never meant to survive.

So some people remain where they are,
woven invisibly through otherwise ordinary days,
thought of more often than reason recommends
and cared for more quietly than anyone suspects.
They may move through the world believing
they rarely cross another person’s mind,
never knowing somewhere, in some unguarded heart,
they have been crossing it all damn day.

When Vulnerability Has Nowhere to Land

On September 4, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

Vulnerability requires more than believing someone cares about you. It requires knowing there is somewhere for the vulnerable parts of you to land.

When difficult things are glossed over, uncomfortable conversations never quite happen, or something meaningful is said only to disappear beneath a change of subject, it becomes harder to lean into someone. Not because there is nothing to say, but because experience begins teaching you there is nowhere for those words to go.

Emotional safety is built in what happens after someone takes the risk of being honest. Do they ask another question? Do they stay in the uncomfortable moment? Do they want to understand what is underneath the words? Or is it acknowledged just enough to move past it?

Because being heard and being understood are not the same thing.

Eventually, a person notices the pattern. They begin editing themselves. They stop bringing up the things that ache because they already know where the conversation will end. They become careful about expressing needs, fears, insecurities, or questions because vulnerability starts to feel less like connection and more like exposing something tender only to watch it sit there untouched.

And then distance quietly grows in a place where intimacy was supposed to live.

The difficult part is that the other person may never realize it is happening. From their perspective, everything may seem fine because there are fewer difficult conversations. Less conflict. Fewer questions. Fewer moments requiring emotional depth.

But silence is not always peace.

Sometimes silence is what happens when someone stops believing a conversation will lead anywhere.

It is difficult to lean into someone who never reaches back emotionally. Difficult to reveal more when what has already been revealed remains unexplored. Difficult to trust someone with the deeper rooms when they continually walk past the doors that have already been opened.

Vulnerability cannot be demanded simply because a relationship, friendship, or dynamic exists. It has to be cultivated. It requires curiosity. Presence. Follow-through. A willingness to stay when the conversation becomes inconvenient or uncomfortable.

Because eventually, even someone who desperately wants to be known will stop knocking on a door that never really opens.

And perhaps the saddest part is that, from the other side, it may look like they simply stopped trying.

The Nature of More

On September 4, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

Some things were never made for one.

One road.
One room.
One taste lingering on the tongue.
One fire burning long enough
to become familiar.

There are souls that ramble.

Not because the road beneath them is wrong,
but because another bends just beyond sight,
and wondering has always been
a difficult hunger to starve.

There is always something else to touch,
to taste,
to learn,
to lose oneself inside for a while.

Something unfamiliar.
Something untried.
Something that whispers,
come see.

And perhaps one can be enough
for a season.

Long enough to become known.
Long enough for mystery
to soften at the edges.
Long enough for wonder
to become ordinary.

Then the horizon moves.

The new becomes familiar.
The extraordinary becomes expected.
The once irresistible
becomes something already tasted.

And hunger,
being what it is,
turns its head.

Not always because something failed.

Not always because something was missing.

Sometimes simply because
the unknown still carries
a sweetness
the known can no longer hold.

There are appetites
that feed on discovery.

On firsts.

On the electric pull
of what has not yet been touched.

And once the mystery is gone,
the wanting begins
to wander again.

Another road.
Another door.
Another beautiful unknown
waiting to become known.

Then another.

Perhaps that is the cruelest part.

Something can be rare
and still become familiar.

Something can be treasured
and still lose its shine.

Something can be unforgettable
and still be left behind.

Because for a soul
built to ramble,
to dabble,
to chase the feeling
of discovery,

one may be everything

until everything

becomes something
already known.

When Words Find the Old Wounds

On September 1, 2026 By Wynter RayneIn Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)Leave a comment

Today, I came across words about tattooed women that cut far deeper than I ever would have expected. The sentiment was essentially that women who choose to tattoo their bodies are somehow worthy of less respect, that being heavily tattooed says something negative about the woman herself. It went beyond simply finding tattoos unattractive. It reduced a woman’s character and worth to a choice she made about her own skin.

And those words hurt me more deeply than I want to admit. I’m not angry. I almost wish I were. Anger would be easier. I could get pissed off, call someone an asshole, throw up my middle finger, and move on with my day. Instead, I am incredibly hurt. The kind of hurt that makes me want to pull away from everyone for a while. The kind that makes me want to hide myself, cover myself, and stop letting people see the parts of me they might find something wrong with.

I know that sounds like an enormous reaction to a few cruel sentences. Maybe it is. But words don’t land in empty places. Sometimes they land directly on top of every other word that came before them.

I got my first tattoo when I was 46 years old. There was nothing impulsive about that decision, and there is nothing impulsive about any of the tattoos on my body. The front of my right arm has become this dark, elegant piece that feels incredibly representative of one part of me. On my left arm are three vivid watercolor tattoos that represent other pieces of who I am. Every one of them has meaning. Every one was thought about and deliberately chosen. There is darkness in me and there is color. There is softness and intensity. There are pieces of myself I spent decades discovering, and eventually I chose to put some of them on my skin.

And my tattoos make me feel sexy.

Even writing that makes me feel vulnerable because feeling sexy has never come easily to me. I have been judged for my weight for as long as I can remember. It began before I was old enough to understand what was happening. Some of those messages came from my own mother. Others came from society, from boys, from men, from clothes that weren’t made for bodies like mine, from movies and television, from jokes and looks. I learned very young that my body was something I was supposed to be ashamed of.

When it came to men, I learned another lesson. I could always be the friend. I could be funny, smart, easy to talk to, dependable, and one of the guys. And sure, sometimes a man might want to play around with the fat girl. Privately. There could be attraction behind a closed door. There could be touching and sex and desire when nobody else was looking. But owning that attraction in the light of day was something entirely different. In the light of day, I was the friend again. One of the guys. Someone they could talk to, laugh with, and confide in, but not necessarily the woman they wanted everyone else to know they wanted.

You learn from that. You learn to question attraction even when someone tells you it is there. You wonder whether they would still want you if someone else were watching. You wonder whether they would reach for your hand in public as easily as they reach for your body in private. You begin wondering whether you are actually desirable or merely acceptable when nobody else knows.

And then people wonder why you overthink.

I have a lot of feelings. I know that about myself. I feel things deeply, I attach meaning to things, and I can overthink at the drop of a hat. Sometimes I wish I could switch that part of my brain off. But it didn’t appear out of nowhere. When you spend enough of your life being taught that there is something fundamentally wrong with the body you inhabit, you become very good at waiting for the moment when someone else discovers it too.

And somewhere along the way, I learned that my body wasn’t the only thing about me that could be too much. My feelings could be too much too.

There seems to be this strange expectation that a woman should be emotionally available enough to nurture everyone around her, but not so emotional that anyone has to actually deal with hers. She can be compassionate. She can listen. She can soothe. She can understand. She can make space for someone else’s fears, insecurities, frustrations, desires, bad days, and complicated feelings. But God forbid she comes with a full set of her own.

I do.

I am not emotionally detached. I don’t know how to care about someone casually once I genuinely care. Things matter to me. Words matter to me. Changes in behavior matter to me. Connection matters to me. I need communication. Sometimes I need reassurance. Sometimes I need someone willing to sit with a feeling instead of immediately trying to fix it, minimize it, or run from it because now there is an emotion in the room that requires something from them.

And I know that counts me out for some men too.

I have heard enough variations of men saying they don’t want “drama,” don’t want to “manage someone’s emotions,” or want a woman who is “easygoing” to understand what is sometimes hiding underneath those words. Certainly there are unhealthy emotional behaviors nobody should be expected to manage. But having feelings isn’t inherently unhealthy. Needing emotional reciprocity isn’t drama. Wanting someone to care that they hurt you isn’t asking them to manage you.

Still, sometimes I wonder whether being a plus-size woman with a soft heart is simply two strikes before I ever step up to the plate. My body can be too much to openly desire, and my feelings can be too much to openly love.

So you learn to make yourself easier. You try not to ask for reassurance. You swallow the question. You tell yourself you’re overthinking. You pretend something didn’t hurt because you don’t want to be difficult. You become incredibly understanding of everyone else’s circumstances while quietly wondering whether anyone will ever extend the same patience toward yours.

And the cruel irony is that I spend my professional life understanding emotions. I know feelings don’t make someone weak. I know vulnerability is not pathology. I know emotional needs aren’t character defects. I can explain all of that beautifully when I am talking about someone else.

It becomes much harder when the woman needing that grace is me.

That is why words like these can still find me. Because somewhere underneath everything I know intellectually is a much older lesson: there will always be something about me that makes me too much and somehow still not enough.

Too fat. Too emotional. Too independent. Too sexual. Too opinionated. Too complicated. Too tattooed, apparently.

And when something happens that seems to confirm one of those old lessons, some little part of me quietly says, There it is. I knew it was coming.

That is where those words landed.

It wasn’t simply someone saying they don’t like tattoos. People are allowed not to like tattoos. People are allowed not to be attracted to my body. People are allowed to look at me and decide I am absolutely not their type. I can accept all of those things. The cruelty is turning a preference into a judgment about the woman underneath the ink. Believing less of women who choose to tattoo their bodies isn’t a preference. Deciding that their appearance somehow makes them unworthy of basic consideration isn’t about attraction. It is about deciding that something about a woman’s appearance diminishes her value as a human being.

Because underneath the therapist and the writer, underneath the woman who can stand in front of a room and speak confidently, organize things, advocate for people, and get shit done, there is still a woman who sometimes looks in the mirror and struggles to see what other people tell her they see. There is still the girl who learned she was supposed to be ashamed of her body. There is still the young woman who learned that she could be wanted privately and ignored publicly. There is still a part of me that is terrified that no matter what else I become, my body will always be the thing someone eventually uses to decide I am not enough.

I wish I had thicker skin. People sometimes mistake being strong for being difficult to hurt, but those aren’t the same thing. I have survived plenty. I have accomplished things I am proud of. I can advocate fiercely for other people. I can tell another woman that her body doesn’t determine her worth and believe every fucking word of it. But I am soft-hearted. I feel things deeply. Sometimes another person’s words get through every layer of strength I have built and find the part of me that still remembers every reason I was ever given to feel ashamed of myself.

Maybe tomorrow I will look at the dark elegance covering my right arm and remember why I chose it. Maybe I will look at the vivid watercolors on my left and remember what each one represents. Maybe I will remember that at 46 years old I finally started making choices about my body based on what made me feel beautiful instead of what might make my body more acceptable to someone else. Maybe I will feel sexy again.

I hope so.

But tonight I am simply acknowledging that someone’s words hurt me deeply. Not because their opinion defines me, and not because I believe what they said is true. They hurt because they sounded just enough like all the other voices I have spent a lifetime trying to silence. The voices that taught me my body should embarrass me. The voices that taught me I could be desired, but perhaps not claimed. The voices that taught me to expect friendship in the daylight and desire only behind closed doors. And now, perhaps, the voices that tell me even if someone can accept the body, eventually they may discover that the woman living inside it comes with too many feelings.

I hate that those voices still live somewhere inside me. I hate that a handful of words can wake them up again. And right now, I don’t have a beautiful ending for this. I don’t have a lesson or some perfectly packaged declaration about loving every inch of myself regardless of what anyone thinks.

Tonight makes me want to be away from other people. To retreat into myself, bury myself under the covers, shut everything out, and hide away from everyone for a while. Not because I want someone to come looking for me. Not because I am trying to make some dramatic statement. I just don’t want to be seen right now.

Because underneath all the complicated explanations for why this hurts, there is also a painfully simple truth.

Not being wanted sucks.

It sucks to feel passed over. It sucks to feel like you can offer intelligence, humor, loyalty, affection, sexuality, softness, depth, and every other complicated piece of yourself and still somehow be the woman who isn’t chosen. It sucks when you have spent so much of your life wondering whether your body makes you undesirable, only to reach an age where you have finally started finding pieces of yourself beautiful and discover there are apparently still new reasons you can be disqualified.

And sometimes I get tired of trying to convince myself that it shouldn’t hurt.

It does.

Tonight, it hurts enough that I want to hide. Maybe being honest about that is enough.

The Secrets of Wynter Rayne

Category: Beneath the Surface (Reflections of Inner Feelings)