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Let’s talk about being the DUFF.

Being the DUFF isn’t about being undesirable. It’s about being close enough to desire to orbit it, without ever being centered. I had my The Summer I Turned Pretty moment this year—and not in the way people expect. I’ve had men talk to me while I had cancer. While I was bigger. While I was smaller. While being a mom. While being Black—yes, that part is half a joke and half real when you realize where I’ve grown up.

Male attention has never been the issue. But there is a difference now. A noticeable one. And people want to say it’s just weight loss—and maybe part of it is—but that explanation is too clean for something this layered. Men and women alike are more interested in my mind than my body. And maybe that’s the rooms I’m in now, the ages of the people around me, the places I’ve been spending time. When people are interested in your body, they rush. When they’re interested in your mind, they linger.

For someone who genuinely wanted connection for a long time, I never quite knew what to do with this version of attention—the kind that wants to see me instead of have me. For a long time, I was already being selective in a way that looks like avoidance from the outside. I was in a hibernation mode—retreat disguised as rest, distance disguised as assertiveness. Then Jimmy came along—he was the one who got me, the one who hooked me with ease, who made connection feel effortless in a way I hadn’t experienced before. But now, he’s gone. And without him, that space feels even quieter.

I’m known to sabotage my own dating life. I’ve never been broken up with—I always leave first. I do arts and crafts around my relationships, trimming and rearranging until there’s nothing left to touch. Maybe that’s emotional avoidance. Maybe it’s intuition. And maybe that’s not maturity. Maybe it’s fear dressed up as taste. I’m still deciding.

People like to joke—and not really joke—that Cara, my best friend, is my only long-term relationship. And the uncomfortable truth is that it’s kind of true. Not because I don’t have other friends, but because she’s one of the few people who has made me feel consistently safe. Jimmy did that too. There’s a specific ease that comes with people who simply want to be with you, not extract something from you.

When you have a large pool of people you could talk to, it sometimes makes you want to talk to no one at all. It turns you inward. At least it does for me. Because I’m not as free as other girls seem to be. And sometimes the question sneaks in: What do they see in me?

That might sound like self-deprecation, but it’s actually something we don’t talk about enough.

If you don’t understand yourself—if you don’t trust that you’d like you—you’ll never fully believe anyone else does. You can’t see yourself through another person’s eyes, but you can imagine meeting yourself for the first time. And if you don’t think you’d stay, you’ll always assume everyone else is lying when they say they want you—romantically, platonically, or otherwise. This season of nothingness has given me space to sit with that. I’m the same person I’ve always been. I’ll grow, sure—awkwardly, unevenly. I’ll still be too much in some rooms and not enough in others. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that I’m finding more people who enjoy me without trying to shrink me, correct me, or remix me into something easier to digest.

Male validation doesn’t heal you. It doesn’t do anything for me.  It just turns the lights on. The way conversations shift. The way eyes move in a room. It shouldn’t be an ego trip—it should be an ego death. A moment to ask: What’s actually different? What stayed the same? Would they still see me if I looked the way I used to?

And the answer, quietly, is yes. The world saw me the whole time. I just thought my body made the world blind to the beauty that I carried inside. And it’s wild how convincing our minds can be—how easily they silence us, bury us, and call it protection.

But this isn’t just about being the girl who was overweight, the loud one, the girl who had cancer,  sexyyred, or any of the other labels I’ve carried. It’s about recognizing how much of the weight we feel—the limits society seems to place on us—are actually the ones we put on ourselves.

Our insecurities blur the line between what’s real and what’s perceived. People will perceive us however they want, but that doesn’t mean they’re lying, or tricking us, or that we’re unworthy of being truly seen. It means our own perception is often the distortion.

The hardest part is learning to untangle those layers—to see ourselves without the fog of fear and self-doubt. Because only then can we begin to understand what it really means to be visible.