Somewhere along the way, your need to be wanted became louder than my need to feel safe beside you.
And I don’t think you ever noticed the exact moment I started disappearing.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just slowly.
A thousand tiny cuts disguised as passing comments, wandering attention, and apologies that only lasted long enough for the cycle to begin again.
I kept forgiving because I loved you.
But somewhere in all that forgiveness, you stopped fearing the damage you caused, and I started believing my pain mattered less than keeping us together.
You told people I was cold.
But maybe I became cold because I spent years lying beside someone who made me question whether I was ever truly enough.
Maybe hugs became habit because I stopped feeling safe inside them. Maybe silence became easier than wondering who you needed validation from next.
You complained about the smallest parts of me as though they proved something larger.
The way I looked. The way I carried myself. The quiet ways I stopped shining without ever understanding why.
Little comments said carelessly, yet repeated enough times that they slowly carved holes into the woman I used to be.
And the cruelest part is, I don’t think you fully understood what it was doing to me.
While you searched for validation, I was slowly disappearing.
I became someone who questioned her worth daily. Someone who no longer recognised the woman staring back at her.
And maybe that’s the part I still struggle with most.
I never understood why my love was not enough to make you stop searching for validation somewhere else.
Because the hardest part of all this was never just the attention you gave away.
It was the feeling that no matter how much of myself I gave to us, it was still somehow never enough to make you stay fully present.
And even now, despite everything, part of me still grieves for us.
Not just for the marriage, but for the version of me that slowly disappeared trying to love you enough to heal wounds I never created.
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