The Epiphany

October 9, 2025

I’ve had an epiphany—

one that changes how I see.

Why everything with him cut so deeply,

why I unraveled the way I did.

It wasn’t the lies,

or the manipulation,

or even the betrayals.

or even the timing,

though it did not help.

Those were only the knives

that struck the oldest wounds in me—

Rejection and Abandonment

from people who were supposed to

Love and Protect me.

I have carried those traumas

for as long as I can remember.

Hardwired into my body and brain

since early childhood,

reinforced by a lifetime

of pain and protective choices.

My mother’s physical absence.

My father’s neglect and the lack of fatherly protection.

My family’s judgment and disownment.

My own long pattern of self-abandonment.

And beneath it all,

the fantasy that someday,

someone would come to save me.

So I built a version of myself

that knew how to protect

my softest, most tender places.

I learned to smile through sorrow,

to be kind, competent, accommodating—

the congenial girl, the capable woman.

I became a serial monogamist,

choosing men who were hurting,

who needed rescuing.

I focused on their wounds

so I wouldn’t have to face my own.

And I made sure

no one could ever hurt me

where it mattered most.

But after years of that cycle,

I made a conscious decision to heal. I forced myself to stay alone rather than

jumping into someone else's bed and mess.

I forced myself to sit in the discomfort of myself.

The loneliness, the shame,

the bad choices, the unrealized dreams.

I sowed seeds of self-love

and worthiness into my bones.

Even as they began to sprout,

I still carried the fantasy:

that someone could save me

with their love,

their consistency,

their choosing.

I worked hard to rewire my trauma

so I could attract something healthy, whole—

someone I could respect and love,

who would stay.

And when he came into my life,

it felt like the universe had delivered him.

We talked for hours,

about everything under the sun.

He whispered words of safety, warmth, and devotion.

He touched me with tenderness

that reached beyond sex,

a kind of physical affection

I had been deprived of my entire life.

So I let my guard down.

I let him make a home

inside my core wounds,

believing his love would soothe them,

that together, we would heal me.

I thought he would save me.

And I thought I could rescue him

from the belief that he was hard to love.

But the truth was crueler.

His promises of safety, consistency, and presence

were empty.

And when he turned away from me

in my greatest time of need—

so quickly replaced me,

then vanished once he knew I knew the truth.

He didn’t just reject me.

He abandoned me.

When the full scope of his deception came to light,

the knowledge that I was never truly chosen

murdered something in me.

I had welcomed a predator into my heart,

exposed my most sacred parts,

and he consumed me

instead of protecting me.

The truest, most tender places in me—

cauterized for years by self-protection—

were ripped open again,

bleeding out faster than I could stop it.

It wasn’t the lies,

or the abuse,

or the cruelty.

It was the empty promise of safety

from rejection and abandonment

that undid me.

But that same knowledge—

the full scope of what he violated—

forced me to turn inward

and finally tend to the wounds

I had been waiting for someone else to heal.

That is what I have spent

the last six months doing.

Learning that love didn’t come

to rescue me.

It came to reveal

where I continued to abandon myself—

and to teach me

how to properly protect myself

as I tended to my core vulnerabilities.

And now—

I love myself deeply.

I trust myself to protect me.

And I am still open

to the softness

of someone else’s healthy love.

And through it all,

I welcome myself home.