A Note to Myself

A note to myself:

• Let go of the people that are hurting you. They don't deserve you.
• You are a good person. And people take advantage of that.
• The hurt you are feeling right now is only temporary.

I know it is not that simple

If it were, you would have done it already. Letting go means unlearning the hope that they will change, that this time will be different, that if you just try harder or love louder or bend a little more, they will finally see you. But you have bent so far you can barely recognize yourself anymore.

Not because being good is a weakness. Because some people see kindness as an invitation to take. They see your willingness to understand, to forgive, to give the benefit of the doubt, and they mistake it for permission to keep hurting you. They count on you being too understanding to leave.

Your empathy is not the problem

Their willingness to exploit it is.

You have stayed because you care. Because you remember who they were before, or who you thought they were, or who they could be if they just tried. But you cannot love someone into being safe for you. You cannot care hard enough to fix a relationship that only one person is trying to hold together.

Part of what makes this so hard is that you see the good in them. You always have. You see their pain, their struggles, the reasons they are the way they are. You understand them, and you mistake understanding for the ability to save them. But understanding someone is not the same as being responsible for them. You can see why someone is hurting and still choose not to let them hurt you.

The pattern you keep living

There is a pattern here you have lived before. You attract people who need something from you — your attention, your reassurance, your energy, your forgiveness. And you give it because giving is what you know how to do. It feels safer than asking for what you need. It feels more controlable than admitting you need something too.

But giving until you are empty is not generosity. It is self-abandonment. And you have abandoned yourself so many times now that you are not sure you remember how to come back.

The guilt of letting go

The guilt of letting go is the loudest part right now. The voice that says you are giving up, that you did not try hard enough, that they needed you and you walked away. But guilt is not a compass. It is a feeling, and feelings lie. You are not responsible for setting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.

Letting go does not mean you stopped caring. It means you finally started caring about yourself too.

The hurt is only temporary

I know it does not feel temporary. It feels like it has always been there and always will be. It hollows out your chest and sits in your throat and convinces you that this is just how life is now. But feelings are not forever, even when they feel like they are. This one will pass the same way every other unbearable thing has passed.

And there will be a version of you on the other side of this who does not think about them every hour. Who does not replay conversations looking for the moment it all went wrong. Who can hear their name without feeling like someone reached into your chest and squeezed. That version of you is already on the way. You just have to walk toward her.

What letting go actually looks like

• Deleting the message draft you have been rewriting for days. You were going to explain yourself one more time, make them understand. But they already understand. They just do not care.
• Unfollowing, muting, blocking. Not out of anger. Out of survival. You cannot heal when their face keeps appearing in your feed and their name keeps pulling you back in.
• Sitting with the urge to reach out and not acting on it. The urge will pass. It always does. Give it ten minutes. Give it an hour. Give it the night.
• Telling the story to someone who was not there. Saying it out loud makes it real in a way it was not when it was just living in your head. You hear yourself describing what happened and you think — wait, that was actually that bad.
• Being lonely and not going back. Loneliness is not the same as being alone. Loneliness is the absence of the right people, not the absence of any people at all. Do not confuse them.
• Noticing when you feel safe and staying there. Not questioning why they have not hurt you yet. Not waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just letting yourself exist in a moment where no one is taking from you.

What you deserve

You deserve people who do not make you question your own worth. You deserve relationships that feel safe, not like something you have to survive. You deserve to be with people who see your goodness as a gift, not as something to take advantage of.

Let go of the people that are hurting you. Not because you do not care, but because you care about yourself too.

You are not too much. You are not asking for too much. You are just finally asking for what you deserve.