18d • Tell your Story
Piece one of my story...
I was very young when I learned how much of yourself you can lose while trying to hold a relationship together. Over time, I became an empty shell, i was living for someone else, isolated from friends and family, and slowly losing my sense of self, my trust, and my youth. At the time, I didn’t recognise it for what it was. I believed what I was told, and I stayed.
When the relationship ended, I was devastated. Not because I had done something wrong but because I had done everything I could. I was left holding the weight of his choices, his actions, and the belief that I was not enough. We were young. It was my first long relationship. We had a child together. Letting go felt like losing everything, even though I was the one who chose to leave.
Looking back now, I know that leaving saved me. More than that, it gave my daughter a different life, a safer one, a fuller one. At the time, I couldn’t see that. I only felt the grief and the heartbreak of letting go of someone I loved, even after everything.
Recently, he took his own life. And with that came a new kind of grief. Complex, heavy, and unexpected. I grieve for the pain he must have been carrying. I grieve for the children he left behind. I feel anger that this was the choice he made, and deep sadness that he felt so low he could see no other way. Most of all, I grieve for my daughter, and the loss she now carries.
I don’t write this to blame or to demonise him. We were young. We were both shaped by that time. I have done the work to heal what I lived through, and I can see clearly now how that relationship shaped meand how leaving it changed the course of my life.
This feels like a before and after moment. I’m standing somewhere in between. Im holding compassion, grief, and clarity all at once, learning that more than one truth can exist at the same time.
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Piece one of my story...
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