Chaos and Charm

I wasn’t born with an attitude — I built one.
One eye roll, one sarcastic comment, one “don’t mess with me” look at a time.
Mixed with the single raised eyebrow, the smirk, and the built-in RBF.

Call it self-preservation.
Call it personality.
Call it fear.
Either way, it worked.

Because somewhere between growing up too fast and being told to “toughen up,”
I learned that softness doesn’t always survive.
Softness is weakness.
Weakness gets you walked all over.
So I tried to stop showing it.
You can’t hurt what you can’t see, right?

But here’s the thing no one tells you about that armor — it gets heavy.
It rubs, it restricts, it starts to shape how you move.
Worse than Spanx.
And when you wear it long enough,
you start to forget who you were.

But every now and then, something slips through.
A laugh that’s a little too loud because I’m embarrassed.
A tear I didn’t wipe away fast enough.
A moment where I forgot to be “on,” so I have to recover… instantly.

And I’ll be real — it throws me off.
Because vulnerability feels like walking into traffic with a “hit me” sign.
But pretending not to care? That’s its own kind of exhaustion.
At first, it feels easier — lighter on your soul —
but in the end, it wears you down.

Maybe that’s what Chaos & Charm really is —
the art of being both sharp and soft,
of laughing through the pain and loving anyway,
of standing tall in your armor but daring to keep your heart just a tiny bit open.

Spikes polished, some emotion showing — just enough to remind the world:
don’t mistake my calm for surrender,
and don’t confuse my softness for easy.
’Cause I’m still chaotic.