Unprotected

“Unprotected” is about what it feels like to let someone know you completely and then watch them slowly stop choosing the parts of you that you trusted them enough to reveal. I wrote this song about vulnerability, but not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. Letting someone learn how you think. What scares you. What you need when you're overwhelmed. The things you don't tell everybody. The version of you that exists when you're not performing strength for anyone. There are relationships where you keep pieces of yourself protected. And then there are people you eventually let into the rooms nobody else gets to see. I didn't love him cautiously. I loved him unprotected.

That's what makes the line, “You learned the way I breathe at night The places I get weak Just well enough to know me But not enough to keep.” hurt so much. Because being known creates a particular kind of attachment. When someone has been allowed into the most private rooms of your life, their withdrawal doesn't only feel like losing a relationship. It can feel like losing the person who held knowledge of a version of you very few people were ever allowed to meet. And there wasn't necessarily one catastrophic moment I could point to and say, There. That's where everything broke. That's part of what made it so difficult. He didn't destroy everything on his way out. He just slowly stopped showing up in the places where he once had. The affection changed. The effort changed. The emotional presence changed. Someone who once seemed interested in knowing every room inside me gradually stopped walking into them. And I could feel it happening long before I could explain it.

That's why the image of the house became so important to this song. I had opened every room inside myself to someone who slowly stopped walking through them. I was still living there. He was already moving out. And eventually the silence he left behind became louder than anything he could've said. There is a particular kind of grief in being deeply known by someone who eventually decides not to stay. It can make vulnerability itself start to feel dangerous. Maybe I showed too much. Maybe I trusted too much. Maybe next time I should keep more of myself protected. But I don't want that to be what this experience teaches me. Because loving openly wasn't the mistake. Trusting someone wasn't the mistake. Letting another person see the fragile parts of me wasn't something foolish that I now need to punish myself for.

The lesson is learning to be more discerning about who gets access to that openness. I can protect my heart without closing it. I can have boundaries without rebuilding every wall. I can love someone deeply without abandoning the parts of myself I'm responsible for protecting. That's what the final line means to me: “I loved you without armor And you knew.” There's grief in that sentence, but I don't want there to be regret. He knew me without armor. And now I'm learning that healing doesn't mean becoming impossible to reach. It means learning that the right person won't make me regret taking it off.