The Version You Buried
Sometimes, it starts so quietly, you don’t even realise what’s happening.
You begin adjusting.
Toning yourself down.
Not to deceive—but to connect.
To be liked. To be chosen.
To not feel so… alone.
You say yes when you mean no.
You ignore what hurts.
You twist yourself into someone easier to accept.
And over time, without even noticing,
you lose track of who you were before all the shape-shifting began.
You can’t tell where the pretending ends and the real you starts.
All you know is—you’re exhausted.
From trying.
From chasing.
From hoping they’ll meet you halfway.
But what no one tells you is that sometimes,
even after all the bending,
all the contorting,
all the trying to be lovable on their terms—
they still won’t love you.
They still won’t choose you.
They still won’t stay.
And sometimes, holding on becomes the very thing that breaks you.
It’s not stubbornness anymore—
it’s self-harm.
When love turns into an obsession to be accepted,
when your worth depends on their response,
when your mood lives and dies on how they treat you—
you’ve forgotten who you are.
And here’s the thing:
They were never “all that.”
You made them all that.
You placed them on a throne they didn’t earn,
and stepped down from your own in the process.
It’s easy to think they’re the ones who caused the damage.
But the truth cuts deeper:
you gave them permission.
You built the stage.
You handed them the script.
You stood back and watched as they forgot your name.
But you can take it back.
You can remember.
That your voice has weight.
That your presence has power.
That your softness is not weakness, and your truth is not too much.
Chasing love that asks you to become less of yourself
is not love.
It’s self-abandonment in disguise.
And the worst part?
It looks so much like devotion,
you don’t see the difference until you’re emptied out.
But you can come back.
Not to who you were before,
but to the version of you who now knows better.
Who knows what it costs to trade your identity
for crumbs of affection.
You come back by no longer needing to be understood to feel valid.
You come back by remembering:
you were never too much.
By deciding that from this moment on,
you stop being the weapon
hurting your own soul.
You are not too much.
You never were.
You just forgot.
It’s time to remember.
And this time,
you do not shrink.
Not for comfort.
Not for closeness.
Not for anyone.
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