Healing didn't arrive like a sunrise.It came like a slow reclaiming.
Not all at once. Not clean. Just moments where I realized I was no longer entirely his. Moments where my thoughts felt like my own again. Where my body softened instead of braced. Where I caught a glimpse of myself and didn't immediately look away.
I had spent so long identifying what hurt me that I forgot to ask who I was beneath it.
When the noise quieted—just enough—I began to hear myself again. Not the version shaped by survival or compromise or fear. The earlier one. The woman who laughed without checking the room first. The mother who trusted her instincts before second-guessing them into silence. The girl who didn't believe love was something you had to earn by suffering quietly.
She had been there the whole time.
The devil doesn't erase you.He convinces you to abandon yourself.
I started tending to the parts of me I had ignored. Not grand acts of self-care—the internet kind—but real ones. Honest ones. I slept when I could. I ate when I remembered. I wrote things down not to justify them, but to honor them. I spoke my truth in rooms where my voice used to shake, even when it still did.
Especially when it still did.
It was strange how resistance showed up once I stopped feeding it. The devil grew restless when he wasn't centered anymore. His hold weakened when I stopped explaining myself. When I didn't argue. When I didn't rush to repair discomfort that wasn't mine to fix.
Control needs participation.
Without it, it starves.
I realized then that he didn't have power over me because he was stronger. He had it because I was wounded. Because familiarity had taught me what love was supposed to cost. Because leaving myself had once kept me safe.
But I wasn't that woman anymore.
There were moments—quiet, almost invisible—when I felt the shift happen. When his words didn't sink in the way they used to. When manipulation landed flat. When guilt knocked and I didn't answer.
I was still afraid.But I wasn't owned by it.
I stood in the mirror one night and really looked at myself. Not to assess damage. Not to judge how far I had fallen. But to recognize the woman standing there—tired, yes, but intact. Scarred, but present. Still here.
"I choose me," I whispered.
The words trembled but held.
That was when I understood something essential: letting go wasn't about him releasing me. It was about me loosening my grip on the story that said I needed his permission to live fully.
The devil only has hold when you believe you belong to him.
And I didn't anymore.
I belonged to the woman rebuilding herself piece by piece.To the mother who was learning to model wholeness instead of endurance.To the future that no longer required my silence as payment.
He didn't vanish.He didn't apologize.He didn't transform.
He just… lost his grip.
And that was enough.
Because the more I stepped into myself—the truer I became—the clearer it was that it was time.
Not for another explanation.Not for another chance.
But for him to let go.
And for me to finally stay.