A journey of self-awareness, emotional detachment, and reclaiming the love we were always worthy of.
There comes a point when the cycle becomes too obvious to ignore—when the pain hits the same nerve one too many times, and you’re finally forced to admit: This is a pattern.
It took me years to see it. Every connection felt different at first—intense, magnetic, comforting in ways I didn’t know I was still aching for. But looking back, they all had one thing in common: the same emotional unavailability, the same taboo attachment, the same ending that left me questioning my worth.
Last year, I made a quiet decision. I was tired of rewriting the same heartbreak in new handwriting. I needed to break the pattern, even if it felt like ripping away a part of myself.
And it wasn’t easy. Letting go never is, especially when the connection feels like the only place where you felt seen, supported, even loved—though deep down, you know it’s an illusion. That “love” was never yours to begin with. It was borrowed. Conditional. Painful.
I started small. Creating distance. Resisting the urge to answer messages that used to give me butterflies. Saying no to conversations that would only draw me deeper into the same familiar emotional chaos. It felt like self-abandonment at first, but it was actually the opposite—I was choosing myself for once.
And still, the mind played tricks. I’d catch myself fantasizing again, romanticizing crumbs. The illusion was comforting. Until I broke it by facing the reality: it was never love. It was longing, shaped by old wounds I never had the chance to heal.
I realized how much of this was rooted in how I was made to feel as a child—unworthy, invisible, too much or not enough. I was taught to survive without affection, so I went looking for love in emotionally unsafe places. Not because I wanted to, but because it was the only version of love I’d ever known.
I’d escape into dreams, imagine connections that could never be real. I believed if I was kind enough, patient enough, “good” enough, they would choose me. That they would finally see I was worth loving. But they never did. And it wasn't because I wasn’t enough—it was because I was choosing people who were never able to love me back in the way I deserved.
Breaking this pattern meant confronting the little girl in me who still believed love should hurt. That chasing it was normal. That silence was safer than setting a boundary. I had to sit with her. Tell her I saw her. That she doesn’t have to prove herself anymore.
The truth is, I’ve never had a “real” relationship—only situationships with people who fed off the fantasy but never built anything real. And somehow, I kept thinking it was my fault. That if I just did things right, they’d stay.
But healing taught me something important: People leave. But I don’t have to abandon myself anymore.
So now, whenever I sense the pattern creeping in, I speak it out loud in my mind: Break the pattern.
I don’t entertain the same stories anymore.
I don’t confuse fantasy with love.
I don’t romanticize being chosen second.
Because I deserve more. We all do. To be loved for simply existing—not because we played small, stayed quiet, or accepted less than we needed.
It’s a hard road, this healing thing. It means facing yourself when no one else claps for you. It means walking away before you're dragged. It means loving the part of you that still aches for the comfort of the familiar, even when the familiar has only ever brought you pain.
But it’s worth it. Because this time, I’m not breaking for someone. I’m breaking free.
And maybe… just maybe, that's what love really looks like—choosing yourself, over and over again, until it no longer hurts to stay.
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