Have you ever heard Hard to Love by Lee Brice? This isn’t a rewrite. It’s not a correction. It’s the other side of that story- the quiet voice that never saw the love as difficult, only human.

You say you’re difficult,
Rough around the edges, worn by life,
as if loving you comes with a warning label,
Like loving you comes with a cost.

Yeah, sometimes you push too hard,
Sometimes you drink too much,
Sometimes you look at me like you’re bracing
For the moment I finally leave.

But you were never hard to love,
Never hard to love,
Even when you made it messy,
Even when the nights ran long.

Because I saw more than the flaws
You held up like evidence.
I saw the goodness you forgot,
The light you swore had gone dim.

You said if our places were reversed,
You’d never stay this steady,
Never love this deeply,
Never carry someone like you.

But loving you was never heavy,
Never something I endured.
It was never a burden to bear,
Just something my heart chose to do.

And I know you think you don’t deserve it,
That love should come cleaner, easier, less scarred.
But I never loved you for perfection—
I loved the truth of who you are.

You call yourself hard to love,
Like I’m doing something brave.
But loving you felt natural to me,
Not something I needed saving from.

So if you wonder why I stayed,
Why I held on the way I did,
The answer has always been simple—

You may have been hard on yourself,
But you were never hard to love for me.

-Bella Imperia

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