An image of I and my Jnr sister
There is a heaviness I carry today that feels like it has been living in my bones for years. It is not just sadness, it is self-hate that disguises itself as silence. It is the way I look at myself and feel disappointment before I even breathe, it is the habit of putting others first until I am no longer sure where I end and they begin. It is low self-esteem that doesn’t just whisper, it just find a way to convince me that i am less, smaller, and only valuable when I am useful.
And the worst part is how normal it started to feel
I learned to overgive, I learned to smile while breaking inside, shining my 32 not letting others see the pain in stretching the cheeks. I learnt to say “I’m fine” when I was drowning in myself in sorrows and pains. I learnt that my needs were something to postpone, my emotions something to hide, my voice something to soften so others could be comfortable.
But in all that learning, I forgot myself.
So today I sit with a painful truth, in that what I've been carrying is the weight of self-abandonment. And it is stealing my ability to enjoy my reality, nothing feels fully real when I am not present in it. Nothing feels light when I am constantly heavy with trying to be accepted.
And I ask myself, even though it stings, What step am I willing to take to forgive myself for becoming this way?
Because part of me is angry at myself, angry that I let it go on for so long, angry that I confused love with overextending, angry that I stayed where I kept disappearing. But another part of me finally understood that I wasn't weak, I was surviving in the only way I knew how.
Forgiveness, then, has to be brutal and gentle at the same time, I forgive myself for every moment I stayed silent when I wanted to speak. I forgive myself for every “yes” that cost me my peace, I forgive myself for believing my worth was something I had to earn through exhaustion.
But I also make a decision that feels like breaking an old version of me, that is I will no longer betray myself just to be kept, I will no longer bleed quietly to make others comfortable nor will I be calling self-abandonment love.
This is not healing that feels soft, this is healing that feels like waking up in the middle of a life I almost lost myself in.
And this time, I'll do it rightly
