Mira
I used to believe love was supposed to hurt a little.
That was the first lie I told myself. The easiest one to accept.
Adrian never raised his voice at the beginning. He did not have to. His disappointment was quieter, sharper. It lived in pauses, in sighs, in the way his eyes lingered on me just long enough to make me feel wrong without saying it out loud.
"You're too sensitive," he said once, when I asked why he had stopped replying to my messages for days.
I apologized. Of course I did.
Mornings with him felt like walking on a floor I knew could collapse if I stepped wrong. I woke up already calculating my tone, my words, my expressions. I learned which questions irritated him. Which silences annoyed him. Which version of me he tolerated best.
The obedient one.
When he was kind, it felt like a reward. When he withdrew, it felt like punishment. Somewhere along the way, my self worth became tied to his approval. I stopped noticing when the line blurred.
The day he criticized my clothes in front of others, I laughed it off. When he checked my phone and said it was concern, I believed him. When he told me I was lucky he stayed despite my flaws, I nodded.
I did not recognize control when it arrived softly.
I recognized it only when it had already settled into my bones.
The fight that changed everything was small. Almost laughable. I had forgotten to tell him I would be late. When I reached home, my phone was filled with messages. Accusations disguised as worry. Anger disguised as care.
"You don't think," he said later. "You never do."
Something in me cracked.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. It was quiet, like a thread finally snapping after being pulled too long. I stood there listening to him talk about respect, about loyalty, about how I should be grateful. And all I could think was how tired I felt.
Tired of explaining myself.
Tired of shrinking.
Tired of loving someone who made me feel smaller every day.
I tried to speak. My voice shook. He rolled his eyes.
That was when I realized something terrifying.
He did not see me.
He saw a version of me he could mold, adjust, silence. And I had let him.
Breaking up was not brave. It was messy and humiliating and full of doubt. I cried more after leaving than I ever had while staying. I questioned myself constantly. Maybe I had overreacted. Maybe it really was my fault. Maybe love was just difficult.
But peace felt different.
Lonely, yes. Empty, yes. But quieter.
The silence after him did not bruise me. It did not threaten. It gave me room to breathe, even if I did not know what to do with that space yet.
I still reached for my phone instinctively. Still waited for messages that no longer came. Healing did not arrive with clarity. It arrived with confusion, with nights spent replaying conversations, with mornings where I missed someone who had hurt me.
Some habits take longer to unlearn.
There were moments I hated myself for missing him. For wanting his voice. For craving familiarity even when it had been cruel. I learned that leaving was not the same as being free.
Freedom took work.
I started noticing things I had ignored before. How my shoulders were not constantly tense. How I laughed without checking if it was too loud. How I could sit alone without feeling like I was failing at something.
I was not strong yet. But I was no longer trapped.
And that had to count for something.
There were days I wondered if I would ever trust again. If love would always feel like something I had to earn by erasing myself. I did not have answers. All I had was the quiet certainty that I deserved more than survival.
I deserved choice.
For the first time in a long while, I was choosing myself. Even if I was afraid. Even if I was unsure. Even if I was still healing.
I did not know who I would become after this.
But I knew who I could no longer be.