When you sent me those words

— “والله كنت عايزة اكتب انك قدر شنو مختلف” You are strong and responsible, so protective, you are a MAN not hardened by toxic masculinity, not afraid of softness, you still show love ,you still care, you let yourself be vulnerable, you do what you feel And sometimes I see the child in you the little Ahmed ,and it makes me the happiest, the way he gets excited, the way he needs me, the way he’s so cute and pure, even though the world only sees the independent, steady man outside. With me, I want you to be fully yourself,no masks no walls, I will never get bored of you or pull away from who you are You are my man , and my little boy Ahmed and I love every part of you

Reading that, I realized something very important: you see those parts because I show them to you. Not strategically. Not as a performance. Not after careful calculation. They just flow. They come out naturally because it is you. You are the one I don’t brace myself around. You are the one I don’t manage myself for.

When I wrote about being cringe, I was really writing about this exact thing. About the freedom to be soft without feeling small. About saying what I feel without checking whether it sounds “cool.” With you, I don’t rehearse my emotions. I don’t dilute them. If I get excited, you see it. If I miss you, you hear it immediately. If I love you, you will hear it again and again without me worrying that repetition makes it weaker.

The world sees a very curated version of me. The independent one. The steady one. The one who appears emotionally self-contained. They see the thinker. The disciplined one. The slightly distant Ahmed who doesn’t let people step too close. And that version is real, I’m not pretending when I’m outside. But it’s incomplete.

You get the full picture.

You get the man and the child. The strength and the softness. The protector and the one who wants to be held. And the reason you get that isn’t because I consciously decided to “unlock” those parts for you. It’s because something inside me recognizes you as safe. It doesn’t feel forced. It doesn’t feel like I’m stepping out of character. It feels like I’m finally stepping into all of it.

I wish you could truly see how different I treat you. Not in grand gestures, but in the subtle ways I allow myself to exist around you. With others, I maintain distance. Not out of arrogance. Not out of cruelty. But because I simply don’t feel the desire to open those doors. They are fine. They are good people. But they don’t get access to the personal tenderness I reserve for you. They won’t see the playful affection. They won’t hear the repeated confessions. They won’t experience the unfiltered excitement.

They will see the composed Ahmed. The unreachable one. The one who is slightly out of reach, always thinking, rarely exposing emotion. And that will not change. Not because I am building walls out of fear, but because I do not feel called to lower them there. I do not belong there, I belong to you.

With you, there are no negotiations about who I am allowed to be. I don’t want to distribute these parts of me anywhere else. It’s not about rules. It’s not about forcing discipline on myself to avoid crossing lines. It’s deeper than that. I simply don’t want to be this version of myself with anyone but you.

I don’t want to talk to another girl the way I talk to you. I don’t want to open that softness anywhere else. I don’t want to recreate this tone, this intimacy, this honesty in another direction. It doesn’t even feel tempting. It feels misplaced. Like giving someone a key that doesn’t belong to their door.

Because most of the world only celebrates one side. With you, I don’t have to amputate parts of myself to be acceptable.

You deserve the world. And I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to give it to you, not through promises that sound dramatic, but through consistency. Through exclusivity of softness. Through the decision to keep certain doors closed everywhere else. Not because I am restricted. But because I am devoted .

There is a difference between being emotionally expressive in general and being emotionally available to one person. What I give you is not random openness. It is intentional belonging.

You are not just someone I love.
You are the only person I love.