Happy Mother’s Day to the women who kept going through things that could have broken them.
To every mother who survived domestic violence, your strength is seen, your love matters, and your story did not end in survival. 🌸🤍
You are still here. That alone is powerful.
I don’t think I realized how much the relationship affected me until it was over.
Near the end, I was overthinking every conversation before it even happened. Trying to word things the “right” way so it wouldn’t turn into an argument or somehow become my fault.
The weird part is I never would’ve called it toxic while I was in it. I just constantly felt confused and anxious.
I started second guessing myself over everything. Even small things.
Did anyone else feel like they slowly stopped trusting their own thoughts in the relationship?
I didn’t notice it while I was in it.
It wasn’t one big moment. It was small things I kept brushing off.
Catching myself rethinking what I said before I said it.
Trying to predict their mood before bringing anything up.
Explaining things in a way that wouldn’t “set them off.”
At some point, it stopped feeling like I was just being considerate… and started feeling like I was slowly disappearing.
What confused me the most is that nothing ever felt “bad enough” to call it what it was.
So I stayed longer than I should have, trying to make sense of something that never really made sense.
I’m still unpacking a lot of it, but writing has been a big part of that for me. I ended up putting a lot of what I couldn’t explain into a book while I was trying to understand it myself.
If anyone else has gone through something like this, what was the moment you realized something was actually off?