listen.. nobody tells you it happens slowly.. there’s no slammed door, no single night where you wake up and realize you’re gone.. it’s quieter than that. it’s a thousand tiny edits made to a woman until the original draft is unrecognizable.
it begins with your opinions… you say something at dinner, and he laughs, not with you, at you… so, the next time, you keep it to yourself… not because you’re shy but because you learned the price of speaking and decided it wasn’t worth paying again.
then it’s your plans… your friends call, and you hesitate because you already know the mood he’ll be in when you get home… the sulking… the questions dressed up as concern. you stay in…. you tell yourself it’s fine, you tell your friends you’re tired.. eventually they stop calling and he gets exactly what he wanted without ever having to ask for it.
then.. it’s your body.. the clothes you loved start feeling like a problem. too tight, too short, too much attention. he never forbids anything… he doesn’t have to. a raised eyebrow does all the fucking work of an entire rulebook.
and here’s the part that fucks with your head…. he isn’t always cruel… some days he’s sweet, some days he’s the one you fell for, and you cling to those days like a life raft in the middle of an ocean he keeps pushing you further into. the good moments are just bait. the crumbs keep you close enough to starve…
a good woman doesn’t leave at the first sign of trouble… that’s what makes her good and that’s exactly what makes her vulnerable… she stays to understand. she stays to fix. she stays because she believes love means patience and she has no idea she’s being patient with her own disappearance.
you stop laughing the way you used to, loud and chaotic and free. you start apologizing for things that aren’t even wrong.. you begin to rehearse conversations in the shower so you can say them in the least threatening way possible. you become an expert in his moods and a stranger to your own….
and one day someone who knew you before.. asks… “ what happened to you..?” and you don’t have an answer because nothing happened… that’s just the horror of it all… nothing big, profound, loud… nothing you could point to and say… there, thats what the fuck broke me…
he didn’t break you…. not necessarily… he sanded you down, a little every day until you fir neatly into the space he decided you were allowed to occupy…
but listen to me… i mean, really, read what i’m about to say… erased is not the same as destroyed.. the woman underneath is still there… still breathing… still furious, still waiting for you to stop negotiating with a man who benefits from your silence…
you don’t need his permission to take up space again…
you just need to remember that you NEVER DID need him in the first place…
for the next 60 days… i want to hold your hand as you pursue a level of healing that would raise your frequency out of range of anyone who no longer aligns with the direction of your life….
for the next 60 days… i want you to not only allow my words to encourage but also see the power that you can unlock when you go inside to listen and read back your own voice…. this is what the full return to yourself is and i think at the end of it… you’ll be ready to walk forward… toward… the thing you once believed could only exist in your dreams…
tap the button below to begin today… tonight… and thank you for spending time with me here..
