“I Didn’t Lose My Softness — I Gave It a Curfew”
People often mistake elegance for distance…Darling…they couldn’t be more wrong.
I was never hard. I simply stopped leaving the front door unlocked.
There was a time when I believed kindness was something to be offered immediately, like champagne to unexpected guests. I welcomed everyone…Lovers; Strangers ; Beautiful disasters disguised as possibilities.
Some stayed. Most simply admired the furniture on their way out.
No one tells you that softness has expenses…It answers late-night phone calls. It forgives apologies that arrive wearing different clothes.
It keeps setting one more place at the table for people who have already decided not to come.
I don’t regret being that woman.
She loved honestly…She believed almost everyone deserved another chance.
And because of her…I survived long enough to become me.
People sometimes whisper that Grand Dame became guarded…No…I became scheduled.
There are still flowers in my house. I still cry when the orchestra gets to the final movement. I still believe in impossible love, handwritten notes, and dancing when no one has remembered to dim the lights.
But not everyone receives that version of me anymore.
Softness should never be available twenty-four hours a day.
That’s how people begin confusing generosity with permission.
Age has taught me that boundaries are not walls; They are velvet ropes.
The worthy don’t resent them…they simply wait to be invited inside.
Once, I believed love meant proving how much I could endure. Now I know love is often revealed by what never asks you to endure in the first place.
That realization cost me a few beautiful illusions. It was worth every one of them.
So no, darling…I didn’t lose my softness. I simply gave it a curfew.
And I’ve never slept more peacefully.
Dangerously yours,
Grand Dame
By E. Jovet
