Let’s get one thing clear: leaving wasn’t the hardest part. Loving them was.
Everyone loves to glamorize “holding on.” We post it, we preach it, we carve it into Pinterest quotes. “Real love never gives up.” “Fight for the ones you love.” “Stay, stay, stay.”
But what if staying is what’s killing you?
I used to believe that leaving meant I was giving up on love, on them, on us. That if I was “strong enough,” I’d stay and fix it. Love them harder. Understand them deeper. Forgive them faster. Swallow my needs, bury my voice, become smaller, softer, quieter – anything to make it work.
But here’s the ugly, holy truth: loving them was the real heartbreak.
Loving someone who keeps hurting you feels like spiritual suffocation.
Every day you wake up, roll over, and hope today will be different. Maybe today they’ll remember your favorite song, or maybe today they won’t slam the door. Maybe today you won’t be walking on eggshells, begging for a scrap of warmth.
You keep hoping. You keep loving. You keep bleeding.
And no one sees how heavy your heart feels at 2 AM when you’re silently crying next to someone who won’t even notice the way your body shakes under the covers. No one tells you how loving the wrong person becomes a slow death, piece by piece, until you look in the mirror and can’t find yourself anymore.
Loving them broke me.
It broke the way I trusted people, the way I trusted myself. It made me question my worth. It made me feel crazy, too needy, too sensitive, too everything. I shrank so they could feel bigger. I got quieter so they could be louder. I stayed so they didn’t feel abandoned, even as I abandoned myself.
We love to talk about the pain of leaving. But we don’t talk about the pain of staying.
I stayed until there was nothing left of me but a version of myself I didn’t recognize, clutching onto hope like a lifeline.
Leaving wasn’t easy. It was messy and terrifying and lonely as hell. I doubted myself a million times. But the silence after the chaos was a peace I didn’t know I needed. The freedom to eat what I wanted without side-eye. To wear what I wanted without criticism. To sleep without a knot in my chest.
I started to heal in the quiet. In the leaving. In the reclaiming.
Loving them broke me more than leaving ever did.
Because leaving? That’s what saved me.
And if you’re reading this, clutching your coffee at 11 PM, eyes puffy from another night of crying over someone who keeps hurting you, I want you to know this:
You are allowed to leave.
You are allowed to choose you. You are allowed to stop fighting for someone who won’t fight for you. You are allowed to stop calling that “love.”
Because love shouldn’t feel like you’re drowning while they watch.
Love shouldn’t be something you have to survive.
You are not weak for walking away. You are not selfish for wanting peace. You are not broken because you loved someone who couldn’t love you back in the way you deserved.
You are not too much. You were never too much.
They just weren’t enough.
And that’s not your fault.
Healing after toxic love isn’t linear.
There will be days you miss them, moments you question if you made the right choice, nights you feel the loneliness so deep it hums in your bones. That’s normal.
But I promise you, loving them was never worth losing yourself.
And you, my love, are worth coming back home to.
You are worth the leaving.
You don’t have to keep loving someone who’s breaking you. You don’t have to keep proving your worth to someone who can’t see it. It’s time to choose you, your peace, your healing.
✨ Need a sign to leave? This is it. ✨
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