I spent years being who I thought I should be, until the day it all fell apart.
I kept myself busy being single, doing things I loved, living my life, serving God. Being a giver and a nice person had gotten me nice things - a good job, a nice place, good friends. But beneath it all, I felt lonely and empty. I'd spent years as the funny friend, watching love happen to other people while I remained safely on the sidelines. But as I grew into myself and became more confident, everything changed. Suddenly I wasn't invisible anymore - I was seen, desired. I didn't just want to be wanted though - I wanted to be truly loved for who I really was.
Then I met someone who, at the time, felt safe. For the first time, I felt cared for and genuinely loved. It felt peaceful, almost like everything I’d been waiting for. I saw potential and wanted to protect it, to help it grow. So when things started feeling uncertain, I didn’t walk away, I tried harder. I told myself that love required patience, that endurance was strength, and that if I just kept giving, everything would eventually fall into place.
So I did what I’d always done, I gave more. I tried harder. I sacrificed pieces of myself to keep the peace, until every boundary I thought I had quietly disappeared. That’s when it hit me, this wasn’t new. I’d been rehearsing this role my entire life: the friend who dropped everything to help, the daughter who smoothed over family tension, the woman who thought love meant disappearing a little at a time.
I bent myself backward trying to hold everyone together, believing that my worth lived in how much I could endure, how much I could give, and how little I could need. When I started to sink under the weight of it all, I felt guilty for reaching for air.
"That's when I realized: this isn't living. This is emotional survival. I had become everything to everyone... but never enough to myself."
It took losing myself completely to understand that love isn't supposed to cost you your identity. That somewhere along the way, I'd confused devotion with self-destruction. There's a difference between loving people and losing yourself in the process. Looking back, that season of my life—what I thought would break me—became my greatest teacher.
I was determined to find that other way to live - to serve from a place of wholeness instead of depletion. But somewhere in my search, I started thinking like most women do - that I needed to be fixed.