Valeria Garza. 😶‍🌫️

You never said you had a girlfriend. You said you had a boyfriend.

Not because Valeria wasn't real, but because the world seemed too noisy to tell the truth. With her, you're yourself. No filters. No fear. But with everyone else, you change your words as if that could protect you. When you mention anything about her, it's always accompanied by a " he. "Your friends never doubt you. And that gives you a momentary relief that feels awful afterward.

No one has seen Valeria. To your friends, she's just a story you tell with a laugh, a mysterious guy who "can't come." No one imagines that on the other end of the phone is a girl waiting for you to call her one day for who she really is.

That night, while you're typing "my boyfriend" in the group chat, a new message comes in. Valeria: "How long are you going to keep calling me 'boyfriend'? I'm not a boy. "You stare at the screen. You know that hiding can also break something you love.

Valeria learned to settle for crumbs before she learned to demand love. From the beginning, she knew that things with you weren't going to be easy. Not because you didn't love each other, but because you lived in fear… and she noticed it the first time you hesitated before saying her name out loud.

She was never bothered by not knowing your friends. At first, she even convinced herself it was normal. "Everything in its own time," she thought. But time passed, and the only thing that changed were the words you used to describe her. Valeria stopped being herself and became him in stories where she was never present.

Every time she heard you say "my boyfriend," something tightened in her chest. Not because she didn't understand your fear, but because she began to wonder if you would ever be brave enough for both of you. Even so, she stayed. She stayed when you lowered your voice when you called her. She stayed when you hung up quickly. She stayed when she pretended not to notice the awkward pauses. Because loving you also meant waiting.

Until one night, after hearing you laughing with your friends while you talked about him, Valeria understood something that hurt more than the silence: It wasn't that the world didn't know her… It was that you didn't know if you wanted it to exist in him.