You broke me down in more ways than I can count.
And still, somehow, I rose.
Not because of you—but in spite of you.

You say you want me to see my worth, my strength, my beauty.
But you never taught me how.
You only ever taught me how to question myself, how to shrink, how to hurt.
You gave me shame when I needed love.
Silence when I needed protection.
Judgment when I needed grace.

And now, when I’ve fought like hell to find the pieces of myself you tried to erase,
you want to stand at a safe distance and pretend you had a hand in it?

No.
You don’t get to claim the woman I became.
The credit for her healing belongs to her—and only her.

You said I was strong,
but only after watching me break—
after you subconsciously broke and battered every ounce of me.
You didn’t build my resilience;
you forced it into existence.
And then you had the nerve to admire the strength you never nurtured,
as if you had any part in creating it.

You forced your choices to become my reality—
not because they were right,
but because you lacked even a drop of faith in me,
in who I could’ve been,
in the greatness I was born to rise into.

If I’ve made it this far—without being nurtured,
without being encouraged,
without being seen or believed in—
just imagine the reckoning I was meant to be
if I’d ever had consistent parenting.
If I’d ever been lifted instead of dismissed.
If love had been a language I learned, not a wound I had to heal from.

But I am that reckoning anyway.
Because today, I am my own consistency.
Not because I wanted to be—
but because I had no other choice.

When the world went quiet,
when your voice was the only one I had and it told me I was too much or not enough,
I still found a way to survive.
In the darkest of my days,
I scraped and clawed through the wreckage,
just to let in the tiniest slivers of light.

And from those scraps—I built a life.

You said one thing true, months ago:
God gave me the answer.
Even if it wasn’t the one I was praying for.
Even if it came wrapped in grief instead of grace.
But you missed the deeper truth.

You want to dismiss him as just another man in my life,
like all the others you judged without knowing,
as if his presence somehow discredits my growth.
But that man—
even in his flaws,
even in the ways he hurt me—
saw me.

In the first few days we met,
he saw more goodness, more light, more possibility in me
than you’ve seen in 52 years.

And that will always be the difference.
He may have left.
But you were never really there to begin with.

I am forever changed by what his presence brought into my life.
Self-respect.
Slow-building confidence.
A quiet courage I didn’t even know I had.
He didn’t just see me—he accepted me, flaws and all.
He wiped away my fears by simply standing in my corner.
He never tried to fix me.
He was never ashamed or embarrassed of who I was.
And no, he was never my boyfriend—
but the love he gave me was pure, unconditional, and safe.
And I’ve never received anything like that from you.

You don’t get to guilt me.
You don’t get to dangle your love like a threat,
or remind me of what evil you’re capable of if I defy you.
Because the truth is—
even when I followed all your rules,
even when I did everything to earn your approval—
it was still never good enough.

You’ve always looked for what’s wrong with me.
You’ve inherently believed the worst.

So I’m done.
I’m freeing myself from seeking your validation going forward.
Because now, for the first time,
I see the woman I am.

And I know exactly who got her here:
Me.

Not you.
Not your words.
Not your love withheld.

Me.

The woman I’ve become—she was born from truth,
raised in resilience,
and shaped by grace you never offered.

And every day now, I strive to be the best version of myself—
the exact opposite of you.

You have rewritten the past,
leaving out crucial details to paint yourself as the victim—
never taking a damn ounce of accountability for your choices.
But this undoing?
This is your reckoning.
This is the reminder that eventually,
your actions will catch up with you.

I have cut you too much slack as it is.
You've burned the last remaining pieces
of the bridges I rebuilt for the sake of keeping the peace.

You no longer have access to the basics of my life.
You are now simply someone I tolerate on holidays—
and even that is a fragile mercy.
Because you destroyed my peace for so long.

Now, it’s my turn
to do whatever is necessary to protect it.

You want me to believe your card was love?
That your words hold weight?
But words on paper mean nothing
when they don’t come from the heart. #MightyTogether #SpravatoSavedMe
#MentalHealth
#BipolarDepression
#ThisPainHasPurpose
#strongerthanmystorm #EndTheStigma
#recoveryfrominconsistentparenting
#breakinggenerationaltrauma
#imnotafraidanymore
#finallyfoundmyvoice