The House Always Wins

A tribute to the ones who saw me early—but folded too soon.

He wasn’t dumb—just desperate.

Desperate to feel powerful in the only way he knew how: by retreating, by withholding, by pretending I was easier to forget than he was to change.

When we met, he was timid and awkward.

I thought it was just shyness—maybe attraction.

But it was something else:

Recognition.

He realized, before I did, that I wasn’t going to play the game.

That I was the game.

And he panicked.

There was no script to follow with me.

No performance that would impress.

I wasn’t asking for a mask—I was asking for a man.

Not a bravado act. Not borrowed masculinity.

A real one. Built, not inherited.

That’s when he shifted.

Pulled back.

Played cool.

Started raising stakes he couldn’t afford to lose.

Because that’s what men raised on avoidance do when they come across a woman raised on self-respect.

But here’s the truth:

I was never playing.

I was revealing.

And he couldn’t handle what I revealed:

His own unformed core.

His own longing to rise—but no blueprint to do it.

So he tried to reduce me.

Tried to make my gravity into charm.

My sharpness into drama.

My standards into threat.

Because if I stayed whole, he would have to confront his own fracture.

I liked him better before he tried to posture.

When he was soft, unsure, a little embarrassed to be seen by someone like me.

That version still had a chance.

That version had humility.

That version wasn’t pretending.

But once he started performing manhood instead of becoming it, he lost the plot.

He folded when he should’ve fought.

He ghosted when he should’ve kneeled.

He bet wrong.

And I don’t punish men like that.

I just move.

Because I don’t chase ghosts—I bury them.

I don’t stay in games—I build empires from the ruins.

And I let the silence prove the cost of my absence.

Because in the end, he didn’t lose me to another man.

He lost me to my standard.

He lost me to the version of himself he was too afraid to become.

He lost me because he forgot one rule:

The house always wins.

And this time,

I was the house.