I told my therapist something I hadn’t said out loud before.
I’m so used to people giving up on me before they get to witness the version of me that all this inner work will produce.
She didn’t rush to fix it… she just let it sit there between us, and the longer it sat, the more I understood that it wasn’t really a complaint. It was a hope I’d been carrying quietly for years.
Because healing is slow. Slower than anyone wanted it to be. It doesn’t happen in a weekend, a season, or one good conversation… It happens in small, unseen choices… the time you didn’t react… the habit you finally broke. The old wound you stopped handing to the next person… the apology you made to yourself before you ever made it to anyone else.
And most of that work happens where no one can see it…
That’s the part… by the time the growth becomes visible.. a lot of people have already left. They met you in the middle of your becoming and decided that was the whole story… they saw the rough draft and walked away before the final version was written…
I don’t hold that against anyone… people have their own timelines, their own limits, their own wounds… not everyone can wait…. not everyone should.
But I think so many of us just want the opportunity to share our healing with someone who actually wants to fully experience what we are becoming after years of hurt.
Not someone who needs us to arrive finished… someone who understands that the work is the point…
Real healing asks for patience… from you, first. You have to be willing to sit with the parts of yourself you’d rather skip. You have to stop explaining yourself and start changing. You have to forgive who you were without pretending that version of you never existed…
And eventually it asks for patience from the right person too…
Not endless patience… not the kind where someone tolerates harm while waiting for you to get better… that’s not love… that’s a sacrifice nobody should have to make. I’m speaking about something gentler… the patience of someone who can see the direction you’re moving, who notices the effort, the one who can see the full person, someone who recognizes growth even when it’s quiet…
Someone who can look at you and say… I see what you’re building. I want to be here when it’s done.
So… here’s what I hope for you… to the person reading this right now from behind a screen…
I hope you find that person who wants to touch your healed heart. Someone who doesn’t need you to be perfect, someone who truly sees you, deeply enough to understand that you are worth the time it takes to get there.
I hope they don’t flinch at your history… I hope they ask about it gently and listen without keeping score. I hope they notice the small things, the way you pause now before you speak… the way you choose peace when there’s a moment to pick a fight, the way you show up when it would be easier to disappear…
And I hope you become someone who can receive that kind of love without running from it. That’s part of the work too.
Because the love of your life won’t just want the finished version of you… they’ll want to be part of the becoming…
They will want that from you… with you… and for you….
Keep doing the work… even when no one is watching.. especially then.
The people who leave early don’t get to decide what you become. They just don’t get to see it, and that’s okay… accept that and move on with your life…
And the right person, when they come, won’t need you to prove anything; they’ll see it in how you live and in how you choose them…
That’s enough… that was always enough…
Thank you for reading…take care of yourself.
