I know what it feels like to give everything and receive almost nothing.
I know what it feels like to lay awake at night wondering what is wrong with you. Why he won't choose you. Why love always feels this hard. I lived it. For years.
I lost myself completely in an abusive relationship. The insults. The control. The nights he would lock me in and take the keys. The photos of other women he would show me, telling me they were beautiful and I wasn't.
The times he grabbed me, pushed me, destroyed everything around me. I stayed. Because somewhere inside, I believed I deserved it.
The day I truly chose myself was the day he tried to suffocate me with a blanket. He was laughing. And in that moment of terror, the clearest thought I had ever had cut through everything: If I don't leave now, I will die.
I left.
What happened next wasn't magic. It was work. The most honest, difficult, transformative work I had ever done.
I had to look at the patterns I was running. The beliefs I had about what I deserved. The way I had been showing up in love without even knowing it. The frequency I was locked into. And then something shifted.
Not in the men around me. In me. Love found me when I stopped chasing it.