Women Don’t Ask For Permission

They don’t promise to stay. They just do. Or don’t. Either way…you’re changed.

I have learned to fear women.
Not in the way weak men do—
not because they are “wild,”
but because they are true.

Too true.
Too knowing.
Too capable of seeing through
whatever mask I thought would hold.

They don’t need fists or size.
They don’t need weapons.
They are the weapon.
Words like razors,
silence like a mirror you can’t escape.
They can carve you open
with a single glance,
and watch you bleed out
like it’s art.

A man can break your bones.
Without a care.
Maybe they’ll even enjoy it.

But a woman—
a cruel woman,
a bad one—
she can reach in and twist your soul,
pluck out your joy,
hold it to the light,
and say “Look at what you thought would last.”

And you’ll still thank her for the lesson.

I can take pain.
Physical pain.
I’ve taken hits,
kicks,
fists,
fractures,
and
bruises.
All from people that claimed to have loved me.

But heartbreak at the hands of a woman—
the kind who pretends you mattered,
the kind who turns warmth
into withdrawal,
the kind who wears your soul like a new coat and then forgets where she left it…
Wears it like it’s more than comfort against the cold,
like an exotic accessory she can discard
once it stops trending.
All while she’s trying another one on.

Or worse—
the kind who crushes your soul beneath her luxurious heels,
slowly,
just to make sure you’re awake for it—

That pain doesn’t heal.
It changes what you believe about love.
About yourself.

And yet—
somehow—
it is women
who have found me on the side of the road.
Who have healed me
when I wasn’t trying to be found.
When I thought I was beyond healing.

Not all.
But the ones who stayed
when I was a ruin.
The ones who didn’t flinch
when I cried like a man is “not supposed to.”
The ones who held my shaking
without asking for an explanation.
The ones who believed in me
before I ever confided in them.

They didn’t rescue me.
They stitched me.
One word,
one touch,
one act of mercy at a time.

Women don’t promise safety.
Women don’t ask for permission
to heal you
or tear you apart.

They are the first ray of sunshine—
and they’re the storm.
They are untempered nature itself—
meant to be witnessed,
felt,
or survived.

I’ve been undone by women,
and I’ve been remade by them.
And both times,
it was intimate.
At some point…
it felt like love.

Because when a woman decides to heal you—
really heal you—
she doesn’t just stitch the wound.
She becomes the scar tissue.
Not absence,
but a shape that remains—
the reason you still feel
when you thought you couldn’t.

But when a woman decides to ruin you—
really ruin you—
she doesn’t just tear your heart.
She becomes the knife.
She draws the scar.
You carry it
not on your skin,
but as a silence that thinks for you.
In your choices.
In your hesitation to be loved again.

One becomes the scar.
One leaves it.
And both stay with you
long after they’re gone.