Desirability converts ordinary choices into status reports other people read about themselves. Your yes feels like a promotion they can flaunt. Your no feels like a downgrade they need to defend against. In that environment, every boundary you set becomes emotionally loud, even when you whisper it.

The heart reaches out, the conscience recoils. The result is the quiet gaze of the onlooker, the bystander’s posture. Seeing harm, feeling its weight, but remaining still. It is not lack of care that stops them, but fear of the moral work that true empathy would require.

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love… Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer,

The absence of support transformed my struggles into a solitary battle, one that I had to face without the understanding or compassion that