u/Alarming_Tear_8347

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The healing journey

is like hiking through the Alps.

Here I am,

standing at the bottom of the mountain range,

my journey only just beginning.

Rocky terrain beneath my feet,

steep mountains stretching endlessly above me,

and a part of me keeps whispering,

Go back.

Back to what I know.

Back to what is familiar.

Back to the misery

I have carried for so long

it almost feels like home.

Because when you have lived with pain

for most of your life,

even suffering becomes familiar.

And sometimes the familiar

feels safer than the unknown.

It would be easier

to sit down at the bottom,

to stop fighting,

to stop climbing,

to convince myself

that this is as far as I was meant to go.

But I don't.

I place one foot

in front of the other.

One step.

Then another.

My backpack is heavy.

Inside it,

I carry pieces of who I was—

hope,

old dreams,

old versions of myself,

old versions of you.

The weakness I once felt.

The trust I gave blindly.

The passions I have outgrown.

The things I thought I would carry

for the rest of my life.

And with every step upward,

I begin to understand—

I don't have to carry everything

to honor what it meant to me.

So slowly,

I begin to let things fall away.

One stone at a time.

But there are some things

I still hold tightly.

The soft, gentle version of you.

The one who was lost

but never completely stopped hoping.

The version of you

I knew better than anyone.

The adventurous one.

The free spirit.

The wild one

who could never stay still.

The one with impossible dreams

and a heart big enough

to chase them.

The one whose love

somehow remained steady

through decades,

through broken relationships,

through marriage,

through children,

through years of becoming

different people.

Those versions of you

are worth the weight.

And maybe that's why

letting go hurts so much.

Because you didn't simply live

in my memories.

You lived in my bones.

You were there

when I was young.

I carried the memory of you

in my marrow

through every relationship,

through marriage,

through motherhood,

through every version of myself

I became along the way.

You were the quiet echo

beneath everything.

The part of me

that remembered who you were

beneath the mask.

And even now,

after all this time,

those pieces still feel alive.

Still awake.

Still breathing somewhere inside me.

But healing means

I cannot keep living

with my hands wrapped

around the past.

I have to let her rest.

That old version of me.

The girl who loved deeply.

The woman who hoped endlessly.

The one who kept running back

to what felt familiar.

The one who believed

that love meant carrying

everything,

even when it became too heavy.

She brought me this far.

Her choices made me

who I am.

And I will never hate her

for the things she didn't know.

I will thank her.

Then I will gently

set her down.

She has climbed enough.

The mountain is still ahead.

There will be days

when my legs shake,

when the path is steep,

when I need to sit among the rocks

and catch my breath.

And that's okay.

Resting

is not turning back.

The journey is long.

But I keep climbing.

One foot.

Then another.

Until the weight becomes lighter.

Until the air becomes clearer.

Until I finally reach the place

I could only see from below.

And when I turn around,

I will understand—

The view from the top

was always worth the climb.

More beautiful

than anything I left behind.

And maybe healing

was never about forgetting

the person I once was

or the people I once loved.

Maybe it was simply learning

that I don't have to carry them

all the way to the top.

Some things

can be loved

and still be left behind.

Some memories

can remain sacred

without remaining heavy.

And some versions of us

deserve to rest

so the woman I am becoming

can finally breathe.

So I climb.

And I keep going.

Toward the mountains.

Toward the light.

Toward the woman

waiting for me

at the top.

Do you ever feel like you're drowning in water while you smile and talk, wearing your mask? Because whenever you talk about your pain, people don't understand.

I've never carried such a heavy weight of pain until he hurt me. It's a weight in my chest that I carry every day. I can't reach out to him and tell him how I'm feeling, so I'm stuck dealing with this agony by myself.

Most days, I'm fine. I carry its weight and make it through. But some days, I feel like I'm suffocating, gasping for air. The healing process is so painful.

The heart can endure so much, but sometimes it really just needs a break, a rest from constantly carrying a weight that was given to it by someone else.

I just have rough patches. This week is one of them..

I want to be in love again, but I’m terrified of myself.

I’m afraid of falling back into my old patterns, of how deeply I invest myself in a relationship, how much I expect from the other person, and how easily I can lose pieces of myself in the process.

I don’t want to cause myself more pain because of the patterns I’m still learning to understand. But at the same time, I want to be happy. I want to love. I want to show affection, be romantic, be spontaneous, and feel that excitement that comes with giving your heart to someone.

But opening your heart is always a risk. Not just because of your own patterns, but because you’re trusting someone else with something fragile. You can work on yourself, set boundaries, and learn from your past, but you can’t control how another person will love you.

And maybe that’s what scares me the most, knowing that I can do everything right and still get hurt.

But I don’t want fear to keep me from experiencing something beautiful. I just want to learn how to love someone without losing myself in the process.

Is there love after losing a great love?

Can a heart learn to open up again?

Is there actual love like in the movies?

Deep, intense and lasting?

Can your heart ever heal when it has been broken into a million pieces?

When can I move on from this ghost that haunts me?

In my quietest hours, I wonder why,

I'm no longer the chaser, but sometimes I miss the runner and wish he'd stop to see.

I would have accepted his dark side.

But I think I saw it the last time we talked.

I needed his cruelty and his silence to find the girl I had been hiding.

I'm no longer chasing shadows or begging them to come out.

I no longer look in the mirror and hide myself from the world.

Now I see me.

I truly see the version of me I'm becoming.

He didn't do me a favor.

He broke me intentionally.

But it was me who rose from the ashes.

It was me who fought the storms alone.

He was just the catalyst for the transformation.

Because if I had stayed in that place, I would have eventually faded into nothing—wasting the life I was given, all for a man who watched me drown in the consequences of his own doing and did nothing to change the outcome.

I would have accepted his dark side.

But I think I saw it the last time we talked.

I needed his cruelty and his silence to find the girl I had been hiding.

I'm no longer chasing shadows or begging them to come out.

I no longer look in the mirror and hide myself from the world.

Now I see me.

I truly see the version of me I'm becoming.

He didn't do me a favor.

He broke me intentionally.

But it was me who rose from the ashes.

It was me who fought the storms alone.

He was just the catalyst for the transformation.

Because if I had stayed in that place, I would have eventually faded into nothing—wasting the life I was given, all for a man who watched me drown in the consequences of his own doing and did nothing to change the outcome.

Has anyone ever been told "I hate you" by someone they loved deeply? Do you still hurt from those words? Is it normal for me to still randomly cry after a year?

You ever get hit with waves? You could be standing there, happy one minute, then the next you remember the hurt they caused, and you shut down. You cry, only to repeat the cycle.

There is a part of me that is afraid of letting go. I see myself fading into the distance, like he's becoming a distant memory, and a part of me never wanted him to be that. I've carried him in my heart since I was 17. I'm in my 40s now.

What if I let him go, move on, find someone new, someone great, and he returns healed and full of accountability and acknowledgment? But what if I stay holding on, and he never returns, and I miss the opportunity to be with someone who will love me the way I deserve?

​

You meet someone in the most ordinary way—at a party, during a festival or concert, while waiting for coffee, or by sharing a seat with a stranger who becomes someone worth knowing. They're handsome, with an easy smile, and the moment your eyes meet, something sparks.

You can tell you've both lived through things. It's written in your eyes without either of you saying a word.

He's steady because he's spent his life working with his hands. They're rough with calluses and worn by years of hard work, yet impossibly gentle when they hold yours.

He's proud to be with you and isn't afraid to show it, but always with respect. He calls when he says he will. He values your time because he values you. He wouldn't risk losing you, and when he makes a mistake, he owns it instead of making excuses.

He can cook, grill, enjoy a drink without it controlling his life, and he's always ready for an adventure. He isn't afraid to take risks or try new things, including different kinds of music.

He pulls you into the kitchen just to dance for no reason at all. He looks at you like you're the most beautiful woman in the world, and for a moment, you believe him.

He believes in honesty. He still calls his mom.

He's passionate when the moment calls for it, but he also loves to hold you afterward, because intimacy isn't just about desire—it's about comfort, too.

He has a life of his own, with friends and interests, and he encourages you to have yours. Neither of you feels the need to constantly check in or blow up each other's phones because trust has replaced insecurity. You know he'll call when he says he will, and he knows the same about you.

You never feel like an option. You never have to compete for his attention. You simply know you're his choice.

Neither of you has to become someone else to make the relationship work. You're both secure enough to let each other be exactly who you are, and somehow that's what makes it all fit.

Year of Silence

Most adults would at least acknowledge when they've done something wrong. You avoid it. Most people would take accountability. You run.

I couldn't tell you why I loved you. I just know I loved you for most of my life. I could tell you the things I loved about you—the parts of you that you erased. Those pieces of you did exist, no matter what anyone else says.

I'm left to cry, carrying the heavy weight of your cruelty and disregard, while you go on living your life as if I never mattered, as if I never existed. No accountability. No facing the mirror. Just an empty shell of the man I used to know.

One day, I will get past the grieving. I will wake up more mornings without thinking of you—not because I erased you, but because my heart won't hold you so highly anymore. I will let the grieving process unfold as I move through one of the most painful experiences of my life, while you remain stuck.

And one day, when it's too late, you'll realize you chased away the one person who truly loved you. You'll see that because of your own patterns, you single-handedly destroyed your greatest chance at real happiness.

After nearly a year of completely cold, unprovoked behavior — the silence, the ignored messages, and the emotional distance — I see him differently now.

For years, I placed him on a pedestal. I always believed he deserved better than me, but I’ve learned that “better” doesn’t shut down their emotions, discard someone, or ignore their pleas. Better doesn’t say “I love you” one moment and “I hate you” the next. Better doesn’t say cruel, hurtful things after someone opens their heart and shares something as personal as a poem.

Better doesn’t sleep with someone and then immediately run away as if they were just a transaction, only to disappear for months afterward. Better doesn’t return acting like nothing happened, leaving someone confused by writing a song about the very intimacy they shared. Better doesn’t disappear repeatedly over the course of two decades, then return claiming someone is their one true love, only to wait until that person is completely vulnerable — without armor, without walls — and then destroy the little hope they had left in love.

Better doesn’t do these things and walk away without guilt, accountability, or regret.

I know I’ve made mistakes in my life — big ones. I trusted the wrong people over and over again. But I truly believed he was different. I thought because we shared a childhood, because we once meant so much to each other, he would be the one person who wouldn’t hurt me. I never imagined he would be the person who hurt me the most.

Letting go is a process, and I’m still healing. But every day I wake up, I think about him a little less. I no longer see him as the perfect person I once believed he was. I see him as someone who is deeply wounded — maybe even more than I am. I see someone who spreads his pain instead of facing it and healing from it.

That is the difference between us. He remains trapped in the role of the victim instead of looking within himself and confronting the things that hold him back.

I refuse to become that person.

I’m grateful I took my time to heal, even though that healing is still ongoing. I didn’t bury my pain or pretend it didn’t exist. I cried. I was in denial. I begged for answers. I accepted what happened. Then I repeated those steps until one day I woke up and realized it was time to love myself more than I loved people who didn’t know how to love me in return.

I’m not in a rush to find love. My focus now is me.

Call me self-centered — I don’t care. I spent 40 years putting everyone else first. Now it’s time to choose myself. It’s time to look in the mirror and love the person looking back at me. It’s time to create boundaries and stop accepting behavior I would never do to someone else.

It’s time to see my own value. It’s time to believe I am worthy of the love, respect, and peace I have always deserved.

For those of you that have had their heart broken by an avoidant, did you stay single and work on yourself or jump into another unhealthy relationship?

I'm finally at the stage where I've sent all the messages. I've gone through every emotion, sadness, pleading, anger, and heartbreak. But not my last message. My last message was different. It was letting go.

I'm no longer going to reach out. I'm tired of living in an anxious attachment cycle. I loved him, and a part of me probably always will. But now, I have to love myself.

A year of silence does something to a person. It makes you question what is so wrong with you that someone who once claimed to love you could disappear without a word. It leaves empty spaces that no explanation can fill.

After sharing a connection that felt as though it reached the soul, being met with complete silence is its own kind of grief. A year without acknowledgment. A year without even being reminded that you mattered.

No matter the reason, that's one of the most painful ways to leave someone's heart behind.

Still, I wished him happiness and healing, and I genuinely mean that, even if I never get to experience that version of him again. Because at one point in our lives, we were each other's safe space. We mattered to one another, and that was real. No amount of time or silence can take that truth away.

Of course my words were perfect when I sent them to you. I would write and rewrite even the simplest phrases, like, "Hi, how are you?"

I wanted to show you that I had done the work. That I was better now. Good enough for you. I had a career, dreams, and had become a functioning adult. Not because I wanted to brag, but because I wanted you to truly see me.

I did the work to become someone I believed you deserved. So every message I sent was carefully written, free of grammar mistakes, because I finally believed I belonged beside you. That I could stand in your world, in your higher class, as your equal.

For a brief moment, I did.

We shared a few memories, fragments of the innocence we once knew beneath the stars. We remembered the passion we found on that April midnight, and the way I recognized you after decades apart. One glance was all it took. There was never a moment of doubt.

I had found my soulmate once again.

And then I watched our love become my greatest pain.

At least the version I used to be.

What if you could go to a clinic and erase their memory, would you? Or would you rather live with the pain just to habe those memories?

Some days I wish I could erase him out of existence, but most days I rather walk with the pain and have those memories.

You know the best thing for you is to move on leave the chaos and pain in the past, because until.they are ready to do the inner work, they will continue to pattern. And everytime it happens it will hurt you worse. But there have been good memories.

How can you move on but keep their memories because not every part of them hurt you. Just the fearful child part of them did.

You know the best thing for you is to move on leave the chaos and pain in the past, because until.they are ready to do the inner work, they will continue to pattern. And everytime it happens it will hurt you worse. But there have been good memories.

How can you move on but keep their memories because not every part of them hurt you. Just the fearful child part of them did.

I had an amazing day today, but than i get home in the quiet of the night and lay here with thoughts filling my head. It's been a year almost and I'm still so confused, we knew each other half our lives, maybe not consistently but i thought we meant something to each other, he waited two decades to tell me he loved me, watched me get treated like shit repeatedly. He knew most of what ive been through, he never gave me a clue he still loved me through all these years. how can someone be everything you ever wanted in one moment, than the worst memory of your life the next? How can some people hurt someone who's only shown affection and act like you meant nothing? It's always when the possibilities are real when the edges of a deep connection touches them, you get so close to actual true deep connection to the only person you actually wanted it from only for them to rip it away in such a horrible way. Its always the ones filled with forgiveness, the ones who are patient and understanding that get shit on. The ones that accept the darkness but also see the light. The ones with a deep soul. The ones that find the good in everyone, the ones that dont judge and hold space for people who never actually earned it. It’s been so hard to accept the fact that not everyone who hurts people feel guilty. Not everyone who crushes your heart after shedding your armor, feels remorse. Sometimes I wish I could be that way, avoid facing my actions, avoid taking responsibility, avoid all and any emotions. I'd be numb but at least I wouldn't stay up at night crying wondering what it was that I did wrong. Why I've never been enough to be loved with consistency and respect.