Healing has a cruel way of showing up with clarity.
Not the warm, peaceful kind of clarity you imagine when you think of “moving on.”
I’m talking about the gut-punch kind—the kind that makes you sit back and realize: Damn. They never had anything to offer me to begin with.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit.
I thought we were building something. I thought we were in this together. I believed every promise, every late-night conversation about “forever,” every "I'm just broken but you make me better" speech. I wore those words like love letters stitched into my skin.
But when you finally start to heal—really heal—you see it for what it was.
Illusions.
Just smoke and mirrors. Empty words.
Promises made not out of love, but control.
Apologies said to reset your tolerance—not because they meant it.
Little crumbs of affection dropped just often enough to keep you starving and believing that one day, you’d finally get the whole loaf.
But the truth?
They were never building with you. They were borrowing from you.
Borrowing your empathy to feel important.
Borrowing your patience to excuse their chaos.
Borrowing your light just long enough to avoid facing their own darkness.
And the most painful part is realizing—you saw potential, not reality.
That “love” you felt? It was one-sided.
You were watering a relationship that was never rooted in anything real.
Just illusions dressed up as love.
And I get it.
It’s hard to accept that the person you gave your heart to was never really “in it.” That they were only there for what they could take, not what they could give.
But here’s what I need you to know:
You didn’t get played because you were stupid.
You got played because you were genuine.
Because you believed.
Because you showed up with your whole heart while they showed up with a mask and an agenda.
And maybe the hardest part of healing is forgiving yourself for not seeing it sooner.
But don’t let that stop you from seeing it now.
Because once you do, everything shifts.
You stop romanticizing the pain.
You stop rewriting history to make sense of their behavior.
You stop letting them live rent-free in your mind.
And you start reclaiming your light—piece by piece.
You start realizing that real love doesn’t drain you.
It doesn’t confuse you.
It doesn’t borrow your light just to leave you in the dark.
So if you're still holding on to someone who made you question your worth, let this be your sign:
They weren’t your person. They were your lesson.
And you? You’re not broken. You were just exhausted from carrying a love that was never mutual.
Now it’s time to take your light back.
Every last bit of it.
