What Was Real? | A Personal Journey Through Psychological Abuse Recovery

There’s a special kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from being left.

It comes from realizing you were sharing

your deepest thoughts,

your laughter,

your body,

your dreams

with someone who never truly existed.

That the reality you built your trust around,

the one you clung to,

anchored your heart in,

made sacrifices for

was a mirage. A construction.

A narrative that someone else held the pen to,

even as you were living it like gospel.

When it all falls apart, you don’t just lose the relationship.

You lose the version of reality you thought was solid.

And that kind of loss unroots everything.

Suddenly, memories become minefields.

Did that moment mean anything?

Was that smile real?

Were the words I clung to said with any truth at all?

Did I mean anything?

You start replaying conversations,

timelines,

every kiss,

every promise.

You start seeing wreckage where you once saw comfort.

And worst of all, you start questioning yourself.

Your perception. Your intuition. Your sanity.

Because if it wasn’t real

what was?

Did I do something wrong?

Was it me?

Disbelief becomes your companion.

Then grief.

Then a quiet, seething rage that rises like smoke

through the fractures of your Reality.

And in the midst of it,

life keeps moving.

There are bills to pay. Children to feed. Roles to fill.

People who expect your professionalism, your steadiness, your smile.

But inside?

Your life is unrecognizable.

That was me.

In the aftermath.

After the lies.

After the discovery.

After the explosion that I never saw coming,

even though I felt the tremors for months.

It was like walking through the ashes of a house that once held your whole heart, trying to point out where the love lived, while no one else can see the fire was ever there.

But here’s the part that matters most:

I didn’t build a home in the rubble.

I looked at the ashes and let them propel me toward something else.

Something whole.

Something true.

Something different than who I was

But still, somehow, authentically me.

I started naming the gaslighting.

I started trusting my instincts again.

I grieved. I raged.

I didn’t scream into towels—

I felt like I had been ripped open, my soul bleeding out onto the floor.

And still, somehow, I rose.

Not in some pretty, cinematic way.

In the messy, human, breath-by-breath way.

And somewhere in that process,

I asked myself the question that changed everything:

Who do I want to be?

Because when the world you believed in falls apart,

it hurts like fucking hell.

And, you decide what comes next.

Breath by breath.

Wave by wave.

Baby step by baby step.

Through the pain,

into the light

of who you were always meant to be.

What’s real isn’t what was promised.

It’s who you choose to become

in the joy,

in the fire,

in the aftermath,

in the rebuilding.

This is what it means to be human.

So what was real?

I was.

My love.

My hope.

My effort.

My desire for something safe and sacred.

My grief.

My clarity.

My choice to rise.

That was real.

And I will always be enough.

Just like you.