the.com/guardedness
Armor you put on so often you forget it's not your skin.
means A cautious, self-protective manner that holds back trust, feeling, or information until safety is proven.
from Traces to 'guard,' from Old French 'garder' (to watch over, keep safe), itself from a Germanic root shared with English 'ward' and 'warden.' The '-ed' marks the state of having been fortified, and '-ness' turns that fortified state into an abstract quality — so the word literally carries the sense of being kept, watched, defended, now worn as a permanent personality setting rather than a response to a single threat.
- origin
- from guard, as in standing watch against yourself too
- paradox
- protects you from pain and from connection equally
- tell
- answers questions with questions
- cost
- keeps out danger and everything else worth having