TheGioBlog

by me

Since I was little, I’ve listened to a song by Melanie Martinez where she says, “I am not a piece of cake, for you to discard with pieces of my emotions.”

Since pre-adolescence, when the trend was to kiss any boy you saw and just move on, I never understood that. I never wanted to feel like an option, like a flavor of ice cream. Someone tastes it, enjoys it for a moment, and then simply walks away.

As I grew older, the fear of facing the consequences, of being discarded, hurt, and being the only one left damaged in these relationships only grew stronger. I gave myself so much to someone that I ended up losing myself in the process.

And after finding myself, I felt lost all over again.

Society tells me that I should be in a relationship, and at the same time, I don’t want to feel even more alone. So where am I going wrong? Why do I always end up being the piece of cake? The flavor that was good, but not enough for someone to want the whole cake.

I never asked any of them to marry me. At most, I just wanted the truth. I allowed myself to go out with a few people after leaving those unstable and reckless relationships, and I met people I genuinely connected with. And I didn’t want to lose that.

At the same time, I always knew these things have an expiration date. Still, I’m never prepared for the impact of realizing how disposable I can be.

And that’s when everything starts to hurt again.

Because once again, I trusted. I allowed myself to go further, to give myself, even in an intimate, vulnerable way that has never been trivial to me. It wasn’t casual. It never is.

And yet, I find myself exactly where I always feared, in the place of the “casual” that was casually cut off. As if there were no feelings. As if everything we lived could be reduced to something disposable, easily replaceable.

It hurts to realize that someone I shared so much with today doesn’t even take ten minutes to reply to me.

And it’s not about demanding anything. It never was. It’s about consideration. It’s about not treating someone who truly opened up as if they were just another passing experience. Because for me, it was never just that. It never is, with any connection I have.

Throughout my life, I’ve met many girls, and many times I judged a pain that wasn’t mine. Girls who gave themselves, trusted, and in the end felt used. I didn’t understand how they put themselves in that position.

Now I do.

The song “Lie to Girls” talks exactly about this. About how we accept things we shouldn’t, believe what we want to believe, and ignore signs just to not lose something that, deep down, we already know will end.

And the pain doesn’t come only from them.

The pain comes from me. From, once again, even knowing everything, allowing myself to feel. Opening so much of myself to someone else, trusting, giving myself, knowing exactly where this can and probably will lead.

It comes from realizing that, in the end, I am forgettable. That many times I was never truly validated. But not because I am not enough.

But because I feel too deeply in a world where people feel shallow. And maybe the most frustrating part is realizing that, deep down, we were taught to accept this. Since childhood.

To deal with absence, abandonment, the constant feeling of not being enough, with the “what did I do wrong this time?” Whether from our parents, from the men who pass through our lives, or even from the fathers of our children. As if this were a natural part of being a woman. As if we are expected to endure it. And more than that, to swallow what we feel.

Because when it hurts too much, it’s considered exaggeration. When we care too much, it’s too intense. When we expect the bare minimum, it’s seen as demanding.

So we learn to silence ourselves. To minimize what we feel. To pretend it didn’t hurt that much.

But it does.

And maybe, for the first time, I don’t want to pretend it didn’t hurt.

Maybe I just want to stop treating myself as something disposable before others do.