Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / When a Relationship Ends Do You Grieve Loss or the Version of You That Stayed? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Thinking Out Loud - Podcast: I remember when everything clicked, not in a peaceful way, in a flood way. All at once. I felt sad, hurt, angry, horrified, furious, defeated, heartbroken. then eventually done. what I realized after that moment was this. ⁓ don't always realize they're being shaped while it's happening. Sometimes you become the problem in the story for refusing to stay in a role that hurts you. Sometimes you become the shield everyone else ⁓ gets stand behind. And I've had to learn how to live with that. ⁓ I joke sometimes that I should have shown up with horns in a cape to match the way I was being painted. that would be a lie because it wasn't empowering at first. ⁓ was painful and I still grieve parts of it today. ⁓ I cry about the people I lost because I couldn't stay in that dynamic anymore. And the hardest part is walking away sounds powerful until you're the one who has to do it no one really talks about what happens afterwards. The silence, the guilt, the second guessing, and the part where even though you were the one being hurt, You still feel like the bad guy. Hi, it's me, Kimberly. Today is a two-part episode. This is part two. Before we go further, note, this podcast is for and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't and listen to me that feels supportive for you. ⁓ Trigger warning. This episode includes discussions of emotional abuse, manipulation, ⁓ ideations. ⁓ question is, when you finally see the truth about a relationship that shaped you, do you grieve what you lost or do you grieve the version of you that stayed in it? ⁓ question sits heavy because for me, it's not theoretical. I need to be honest. If I had stayed, I don't think I would be here today. I was hitting a breaking point. My mind had been shaped for so long by the story. I was already telling myself I was a burden, I was too much, I was the problem. when you hear something long enough, it stops sounding like something someone said to you and it starts sounding like truth. It becomes your internal voice. I think it mixed with old wounds, things I had already carried from childhood, being told in different ways my existence was difficult. that combination, it was heavy. I mean, everything feel like what's the point. I didn't go through it alone. I had my husband and my best friend. They didn't create the mess I was in, but they saw me in it before I was fully broken. ⁓ They gave me safety. They gave me consistency. They gave me love that didn't require me to perform. I won't pretend it was easy after that I had a lot to unlearn. I didn't know how to be loved without earning it. I didn't know how to accept care without proving I deserved it. in some ways they had to learn me too. They had to learn how to love someone who didn't always know how to receive love safely. I had to learn something as important. that love doesn't mean tolerating harm. And sometimes love sounds like, no, enough. I will not be treated this way. I'm really grateful I had them ⁓ now for the first time in my life, I have something that feels like stability. have a community. I have a family with my husband and our girls who love me mess an all. I a boss who believes in me. ⁓ have real friends. ⁓ sometimes still hits me ⁓ that I had the capacity for this. I didn't understand relationships the way I do now. I do have CPTSD from that relationship and there are still things I'm working through. for the first time, I feel like I can actually be myself. I don't have to be defensive all the time. I don't have to anticipate harm in every interaction. ⁓ can ask questions. I can slow down. I can let go of people who don't want what I have to offer and be okay with that. It was very easy for me to feel like I was crazy. Mutual friends minimize what was happening. My family pressured me to forgive them because they really liked this person and my pain made them feel uncomfortable. I found that interesting because it was never there going through something. Honestly, they were always going through something again. And most of the time were the ones creating the chaos in their own lives. I never actually wanted to go back after I realized they had started sharing parts of my assault story and twisting it, rewriting it, making it sound like it happened differently than it did. what's wild is this ⁓ used to work on me. ⁓ They would tell my vulnerable moments and then rescue me from reaction. this time I finally had the courage to ask, because I just assumed people were talking about me. And I asked these people who were usually framed if they had said something and they admitted, no, it wasn't my story to tell, Kimberly. that was the moment something shifted How I was being treated, how the story was being used against me, proved to me. This was never gonna stop. After a long stretch of no contact, and once I finally realized what they had done, I completely blocked them. the damage didn't stop there. I started believing I didn't deserve friends. I even pulled away from my best friend during my pregnancy, and she didn't let me disappear though. ⁓ said in her own way, and nope, ⁓ you be sad, but you're stuck with me. And she stayed. Motherhood when everything intensified. pregnancy, I felt like I was holding my breath constantly. ⁓ I was scared. I didn't fully believe I safe because I had been told by my family that I was bipolar, dramatic, a liar, and unstable. I want to be clear here. People who struggle with bipolar disorder have a special place in my heart. I just was raised with people using it against me. Because I was a lot. I am a lot. But in reality, I have seen many doctors and I have told family, no one has diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. And this person and my family kept labeling me it anyways. anyway. for me, postpartum wasn't just hard. It was layered on top of a belief system. had already absorbed when my baby needed me instead of ⁓ it feeling comfort that I was needed. It triggered and ugly emotions. ⁓ it exposed me honestly. a part of me was still fighting the thought if my family sees me as this bad person, why am I trusted with this wonderful little girl? and then the spiral would start. ⁓ can't do this, right? I'm going to disappoint My husband's going to leave me. I'm too much. Even when I was doing okay, most of the time, my therapist kept reminding me, Kimberly, you're doing well. Then a phone call from a family member would trigger it. And then I would start screaming again. And I realized I had to step back from that because they weren't going to stop. And I had to focus on internally. was overwhelmed, overstimulated and constantly on edge. Eventually I had a breastfeeding. to get support and to not feel ⁓ so bad the time. And I'm deeply grateful for my OB, my therapist and my husband during that time. stopped They helped stabilize me when I couldn't stabilize myself. And slowly life started to shift. I found friendships that didn't require explanation. People who didn't ask, what did you do wrong before they asked how I was? And I realized something important. I wasn't actually asking to be analyzed. I was asking to be heard. I also had to face something uncomfortable. ⁓ had built patterns that mirrored chaos. not the harm itself, the familiarity it, the intensity, the instability, the urge to fix or be chosen. ⁓ And I had to learn the difference between ⁓ something challenging and something being unsafe, sometimes what feels love is what your nervous system recognizes. ⁓ I started pulling back from relationships that required me. To over explain myself though, ⁓ I stopped answering questions that weren't ⁓ safe to answer even when people met well, there was often still underneath it. I don't want to take sides, Kimberly. And I finally understood. I wasn't asking people to take sides. I was asking them to care about harm. I stopped overextending. ⁓ a conversation sooner. I disengaged when I felt myself shrinking. ⁓ I stopped prioritizing other people's comfort over truth. slowly I stopped chasing understanding from people ⁓ who weren't willing to it. something surprising happened in that space. I found people who didn't need the full story to believe me. ⁓ They didn't interrogate me. They didn't debate my experience. ⁓ They stayed present with me. And I believe that was what I had been missing all along. Not perfect understanding, safety. I also learned something for myself. Some people felt uncomfortable to me at the time because they were unfamiliar, not because they were harmful, because ⁓ they weren't chaotic. sometimes what I labeled off was actually calm. I to learn to separate those things because poison to one person can feel like an antidote to another. And sometimes what feels like an antidote at first can feel uncomfortable while your system adjusts. I'm still learning, ⁓ now I'm just Kimberly. Not someone constantly managing someone else's emotion, not someone trying to prove she's okay. Just me building a life with my husband and our girls building friendships that feel steady, learning how to exist without constantly defending myself. And for the first time, I don't feel like I'm rebuilding alone. I feel supported while I do it brick by brick. So back to the question. When you finally see the truth about a relationship that shaped you, do you agree with what you lost or do you agree with the version of you that stayed in it? I think at first you grieve everything. You grieve the people you grieve the memories. You grieve the versions of family, friendships, connections you thought you had, even if it wasn't real in the way you believed it was. that grief is real. You don't walk away from something ⁓ like and feel relief. You feel absence. ⁓ You withdrawal. You feel guilt. feel confusion about whether you're allowed to feel it in the first place, over time, something else starts to happen. You start grieving yourself, not the version of you that was weak, the version of you that kept surviving in an environment that required you to disappear. Your grief, the part of you that over explained ⁓ the that stayed quiet to keep the peace. ⁓ part you that thought being understanding meant accepting harm. You grieve the version of you that thought love had to be earned. then slowly ⁓ even deeper shifts. You stop only grieving and you start recognizing the version of you wasn't broken. was adapting. ⁓ was doing exactly what it needed to do to survive what it was in. ⁓ I think that's the part I didn't understand a long time, healing, isn't just about leaving people. It's about learning the version of yourself that to exist around them I didn't just lose relationships. I lost the identity I built inside of them and I had to rebuild the identity from scratch, ⁓ not from shame, but with honesty. And now when I look in my life, I don't see someone who escaped a story. I see someone who is learning how to live outside of it. and that difference matters because one is survival and the other is life. if I had to answer the question now, I don't think I only grieve what I lost. ⁓ I don't think I only grieve who I was. I think I grieved the illusion I had to choose between myself and belonging because real belonging doesn't ask you to disappear.