July 7th, I Chose Myself. And I Haven’t Stopped.

If I truly want to heal and move forward, I need to confront everything that happened. Everything he did to me over the years, everything I allowed, and everything I convinced myself was somehow justified.

I need to stop telling myself that he’s a good guy. Stop making excuses because of what he’s been through, telling myself that if I had experienced his past, I wouldn’t be half the person he is today. Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Justifying his actions.

At some point, we are responsible for who we are, regardless of our past. Our upbringing may explain our behaviors, but it does not excuse them. And good people don’t continuously hurt, belittle, or cut down the person they claim to love the most.

When I actually look at everything from an outside perspective, I don’t know that he is a good person. Maybe he’s better than what others might have become under similar circumstances. But that doesn’t make the way he treated me acceptable.

I spent years questioning myself. Being made to feel insignificant, being talked down to, and eventually believing that expressing my emotions was somehow manipulative. That I was gaslighting him. That my feelings were weapons I was using against him.

They weren’t weapons. They were real.

But somehow, he made them weapons against myself.

So I stopped expressing them. I internalized everything. I questioned how I spoke, how I reacted, what I could have done differently so he wouldn’t respond the way he did. I made myself responsible for managing someone else’s behavior.

And the more I look back, the more I recognize just how much I normalized. The anger. The justification for every reaction. The road rage that left me genuinely terrified, including the time he chased another driver down the highway, weaving through traffic, while I begged him to stop. And his response? That if the guy wanted to start something, he had a gun.

That shit scares me. And looking back, the way he justified his actions was absolutely gross.

I cannot keep minimizing things simply because I loved him.

But I also have to hold myself accountable.

I wasn’t perfect. I know there were times I deliberately poked at him when I was hurt, when I felt vulnerable, when I desperately wanted some kind of attention. And I told him why. Because sometimes even negative attention felt better than none at all.

Loneliness fucking sucks. Especially when you aren’t alone.

I recognize that behavior, and I don’t want to repeat it. I am willing to acknowledge the things I’ve done, the things I’ve allowed, and the things I still need to change. I have hurt people, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But so much of the damage I was doing was to myself.

And I’m done doing that.

I’m done losing pieces of myself because of decisions I didn’t make. I’m done allowing someone else’s choices to determine how I feel about myself, what I deserve, or what my future looks like.

My home may not feel as bright as the rest of my world right now, but I’m going to fight like fucking hell to change that. Because I’m done losing things.

And what an incredible feeling it is to recognize how much has already changed.

Yesterday, sitting at the doctor’s office, I didn’t feel the need to pretend. I wasn’t picking at my fingers, trying to control my nerves or maintain my composure. I didn’t have to keep my composure. I was authentically exactly how I felt.

And I was proud of myself.

Such a small moment, but such an enormous realization. I don’t have to hide what I’m feeling. I don’t have to make myself smaller. I don’t have to constantly question whether my emotions are acceptable.

I am allowed to be exactly who I am.

And I am miles, miles, from the woman I was on July 7th.

That was the day I finally chose myself. And I’ve been choosing myself ever since.

I’m beginning to struggle to find the reasons I hated myself for so long. And the more I confront those feelings, the more I recognize how much of that hatred came from what I accepted, what I tolerated, and how little value I placed on myself.

Because I would never have encouraged someone I loved to accept the things I accepted.

I’ve had friends come to me with similar experiences, and I have always reminded them of their worth. Their value. The beautiful souls they are and everything they deserve from life.

So why was I so unwilling to believe those same things about myself?

I think part of it is that I see people for who they are, but I also see them for who they could be. And I need to learn the distinction between someone’s potential and their willingness to actually become that person.

Because becoming better requires work. Every single day. It requires changing your mindset, questioning your behaviors, challenging what you’ve always believed, and choosing to do what’s hard instead of what’s easy.

And I’m willing to do the fucking work.

I’m doing it. Every single day. Not perfectly, and not without setbacks. But I’m doing it because I genuinely want to become better. Not for someone else. For myself.

And I’m fucking loving who I truly am.

One of the most beautiful realizations came when I started reaching out to people after the breakup. I thought I had nobody. I had pushed so many friends away over the years because I was afraid to be vulnerable. Afraid to talk about what was happening. Afraid that sharing my experiences would make someone I loved look bad.

But when I finally reached out?

They were all there. Every single one of them.

Even after the distance. Even after the silence.

And I am so fucking thankful for that.

Because it reminded me of something I had completely forgotten about myself.

I am a great fucking person.

Not because I’m perfect. Not because I’ve never made mistakes or hurt someone. But because of the person I genuinely am. Because of the love I give, the compassion I have, and the way I want the people around me to experience everything beautiful that life has to offer.

Those friendships weren’t meaningless simply because I had withdrawn. The connections I had built were real. And the people who knew me still saw something worth showing up for, even when I couldn’t see it myself.

I’m finally learning to see myself through that same lens.

I deserve everything beautiful that this world has to offer. And I will continue being someone who does whatever she can to help others experience that same happiness.

The difference now is that I will no longer sacrifice myself to make that happen.

My compassion is not a weakness. My emotions are not weapons. And my ability to love someone does not mean I have to accept how they treat me.

I can’t change what happened. I can’t change the decisions he made. I can’t make him take accountability, and I can’t make him become the person I always believed he could be.

But I can take accountability for myself. For my decisions, my boundaries, my happiness, and the life I want to build.

He doesn’t have that power anymore.

He doesn’t get to control how I see myself. He doesn’t get to determine my worth. And he doesn’t get to decide what happens next.

I do.

July 7th, I finally chose myself.

And every day since, I’ve been discovering just how fucking worth it I am.

And it’s beautiful.