Sometimes Connection Is Outsourced

There are days when the weight gets too much.

Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a falling-apart way.
Just in the quiet build-up of unmet needs — touch, care, softness — things I’ve spent years learning how to live without.

And sometimes, when I get a stretch of space — when I’m not parenting, not working, not surviving — I feel just how deep that ache goes.

And I realise: I still need to be held.

---

Sometimes that connection comes in ways that aren’t “ideal.”
Ways I wouldn’t choose long-term.
But ways that work — for now.

Ways that let me feel, just for an hour, like someone sees me.
Like I matter.
Like I’m not a burden for needing warmth.

Because even in structured support — even when someone is paid to hold space — it can still be real.

Not everything that’s paid for is fake.
And not everything free is sincere.

---

She was kind.
She met me where I was.
She didn’t rush me or shame me or judge the vulnerability I brought in with me.

She helped me feel something close to safe.

And while I know it wasn’t the kind of intimacy that lasts, it wasn’t meaningless either.

It was… a moment.
One I needed.

---

If I had been mothered differently — if I’d learned what it meant to be consistently seen, soothed, and supported — maybe I wouldn’t find myself reaching in this way.

But I wasn’t.

So now, I meet the need with the tools I have — and I do it consciously.

Not impulsively.
Not guiltily.
But with full awareness of what’s missing and why it matters.

---

This isn’t the end goal.
I’m building something deeper.

Bit by bit, I’m becoming the kind of man who not only feels safe in connection — but can trust that it will last.

But until then, I’m not ashamed of what keeps me soft.
Not ashamed of needing to feel wanted.
Not ashamed of the ways I survive with grace when I could’ve self-destructed instead.

Sometimes, connection is outsourced.

That doesn’t make it wrong.
It just means I’m human.

And I’m learning.