Healing became more complicated for me when I realized someone can be deeply wounded and still deeply hurt you. For a long time, I thought acknowledging the abuse meant I had to hate him. But I don’t.

I see his trauma. I see the pain he carried. I see the choices that shaped him. I know there were moments of real love, real attachment, real tenderness. And still, the relationship slowly drained me.

That truth took me a long time to accept.

Because someone can love your light and still not know how to protect it. Someone can need your warmth, your loyalty, your emotional care, while also creating a relationship where you slowly disappear from yourself trying to keep it alive.

That was the grief for me. Not just losing him. Realizing how much of myself I had sacrificed trying to love someone who could not fully meet me there.

And the hardest part? I know losing me hurts.I know the absence of my care, my presence, my love, my light is felt. But I can no longer keep abandoning myself to keep someone else from feeling the consequences of how they loved me.

That isn’t cruelty.That’s choosing myself.

Join the journey 💛 michele-natale