“You think because you understand one, you must understand two, because one and one make two. But you must also understand and.” -Rumi

My Interpretation: There is no single reason I stayed. It was not logic. It was not weakness. It was a thousand quiet reasons tangled together – love & fear. Hope & habit. Comfort & confusion. To understand why I stayed, you would have to understand and.

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Series 1 – Part 2

You do not just wake up one morning

& realize you are stuck.

It creeps in.

 

Through skipped meals, swallowed words,
the way your voice softens around them.
You feel it when
their name on your phone makes your stomach sink –

& you whisper,
“Maybe they are just having a rough week.”
Every week.

 

But by the time you name it,
you have already made a home inside it.

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Holding on became muscle memory.

Not because it was safe –  

but because it was familiar.

 

Because I learned early on

that love could mean pain,

silence,

waiting by the door.

 

So, I did not run when it got hard.

I dug in.

I called the distance independence.
The coldness stress.
The manipulation passion.
The gaslighting a misunderstanding.

 

Because when you are raised to believe

love is earned,

not given –

you stay.

 

You perform.

You fix.

You shrink.

---

The worst part?

You become fluent in justifying what hurts.

 

You learn to explain away the bruises –

not the visible ones,
but the ones that fracture your voice,
your sleep,
your sense of self.

 

Eventually,

you stop recognizing them as damage.

 

I was not afraid of being alone.

I was afraid of what it would mean to finally say:

“This is not love.”

 

Because if it was not love –

what the hell had I been surviving for?

---

I held on for so long,

I forgot what letting go felt like.

I forgot that you could leave

without needing a final blow.

 

That slow erosion is enough.

 

I forgot that closure

is not always a conversation –

 sometimes it is just… done.

 

Sometimes you put the guilt down

& walk away with nothing but your name.

& that is still a victory.

---

This is not a declaration that I am healed.

This is not some triumphant mic drop.

 

This is a confession:

I stayed because staying

was easier than rewriting the story.

 

Because letting go felt like another death –

& I was already grieving everything else.

 

But now?

Now I know:

 

Letting go is not giving up.

It is giving back everything

that was never mine to carry.

 

Xoxo ♡