Why I Wrote Something Tender Survives
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When I first sat down to write Something Tender Survives, I didn’t know if I was building a novel or just trying to exhale. I’d written about trauma before—memoirs where I peeled back the skin of my past, bled truth onto the page, and called it healing. But this story? This wasn’t autobiography. This was fiction. And that was the scariest thing of all—because it meant I couldn’t hide behind the safety of memory. I had to imagine something else.
Not something different, necessarily—but something deeper.
Something I hadn’t let myself say out loud.
Because sometimes, fiction is where we bury the truths we’re too afraid to admit in nonfiction. And this story—the story of Alexander—it let me ask: “What if I had left earlier? What if I had believed I deserved more before I had to lose everything to prove it?”
“I built a life around someone who broke me in pieces so slowly, so carefully, that I didn’t notice I was bleeding until I couldn’t stand up anymore.”
That line, ripped straight from the “From the Author” note in the book, is more honest than anything I’ve ever said aloud in therapy. Alexander is not me. But he’s built from the same materials: bruised hope, careful survival, and a quiet, tenacious yearning to be held without being hurt.
Why this story, and why now?
Because there’s still not enough language for what it means to survive love that wounds you without ever leaving a mark. There’s still shame in saying: “It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t all bad. But it still broke me.”
Something Tender Survives is for anyone who’s ever sat in that ambiguity, who’s ever doubted their pain because it didn’t fit someone else’s definition of abuse.
It’s for the nights you stayed, and the moment you left. It’s for the ones who flinch at kindness because it feels too unfamiliar.
“You are not less because you broke. You are not weak because you loved someone who didn’t know how to love you back.”
When I wrote this novel, I didn’t want to rehash pain—I wanted to map the terrain of healing. The messy, nonlinear, tender terrain of choosing yourself one inch at a time.
Alexander’s story begins in survival mode. His love story, if we can call it that, is not with Efrain (though Efrain is the soft contrast that lets us dream). His real love story is with himself—the version of him that finally says, enough. The version that learns stillness isn’t safety, and tenderness isn’t a threat.
“Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder if I’ll ever be someone’s first choice—or if I ever was.”
Those are the kinds of thoughts that don’t show up in Hallmark movies. They show up in quiet kitchens, in empty apartments, in the aching silences after a fight that never had to happen. They live in people like Alexander. People like me. People like maybe you.
Writing this novel wasn’t about catharsis—it was about companionship. I wrote it so that someone out there—maybe someone stuck, or someone healing—could recognize themselves in the wreckage and say: I’m not alone.
“Trauma lingers, but tenderness survives. Maybe not the kind you used to beg for—but the kind you give yourself when you finally stop begging.”
That’s the beating heart of this book. Not revenge. Not recovery. But quiet, radical, unshakable hope.
If that sounds like something you need—or something you know someone else needs—I hope you’ll read Something Tender Survives.
And if you already have… thank you. You’re why I wrote this. And why I’ll keep writing.
— Brandon Cloud