Personal

Somewhere in the Minefield

You want to know pain?

I will tell you about pain.

For a long time I was getting more and more frustrated every day, living in a constant state of uncertainty. Waiting for the floor to fall through at any minute. It felt like walking on a tightrope when my balance was already awful.

I was fighting for my life.

But I knew I loved him. I knew I loved him enough to put myself through it. And somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that if I could survive the mess we were in, we would eventually reach a happier place together. A calmer place. A place where everything would finally make sense.

I thought that would be our forever.

So I pushed myself to be strong. I told myself to be patient. Even when I knew I was betraying myself in the process, I believed it would be worth it. I believed he would eventually love me enough to make up for everything I had endured.

I was so certain about my love.

The only thing I was never certain about was whether he would choose me.

Until the very last minute, I did not know.

He prolonged the uncertainty. He delayed decisions. He let the tension stretch day after day while I carried emotions that were heavier than anything I had ever carried before.

Eventually, like any human being pushed to the edge, I imploded.

And the worst part was that I imploded alone.

I was isolated even in my collapse. I was not loved in that moment. I received very little compassion. When I think about it now, it still hurts. I remember feeling like I was being buried underground, like sand was being thrown over me while I was still breathing beneath it.

I felt lower than low.

I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

For two days after that moment, I sank deeper into myself. I tried to stay afloat, but it felt inevitable that I would drown.

And in that darkness, instead of being lifted up, I was given even more pain.

You know the phrase about kicking someone when they are already down? Even that does not fully describe the hell I experienced.

Eventually I stopped fighting.

I needed escape. I needed relief. I needed anything other than the unbearable feeling sitting in my chest.

Anything but that.

So at 3:40 in the morning, on the 25th of November 2024, I did something I had sworn I would never do again. Something I had not done in over a decade. Something I had always been too afraid to repeat.

But that night the pain was greater than fear.

And I bled.

I watched myself bleed. I watched the pain sink into my body and, for a moment, I allowed myself to become numb.

I did not think it through. I was not in a place where thinking was possible. I just needed to escape the awful way he had made me feel. His abusive words were still ringing in my ears. I was still in disbelief that after all the love I had given him, this was how I was being repaid.

And then suddenly it was too late.

Blood stained the pages that should have been filled with ink. A strange, dark aesthetic formed in front of me. My pain had created its own visual memory.

A tragic snapshot of the moment.

But the thing is, it did not stop.

I thought it would stop. It did not.

That was when panic set in.

What do I do now? Who do I call?

And the truth was that I had no one.

I certainly could not call the person whose words had pushed me so far into that darkness.

So, terrified, I pulled myself together and went to the emergency room alone.

I had to. I did not have a choice.

Calling a cab and walking into that hospital was one of the most humiliating moments of my life. I felt helpless. I felt ashamed.

Why did I do this? How did I let myself fall so far down?

Had I not promised myself years ago that I would never return to that place?

Had I not promised my younger self that we would do better?

Oh God. I am so sorry.

I walked into the ER and showed them my wounds.

I was not prepared for the look in their eyes. The pity. The sadness. The concern. I was trying so hard to appear strong despite the obvious state I was in.

They treated me quickly and with care.

They asked about my mental health history. I told them the truth. That I was already on SSRIs. That I had both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. That I was trying to do the right things to stay well.

For the first time in a long time, doctors did not disappoint me. For the first time it felt like someone understood that pain can exist even when you are trying your best.

But it did not change the reality.

I needed eight stitches.

Eight stitches for one moment of collapse.

I left the hospital around six in the morning. They were hesitant to send me home alone, but they did.

He knew what had happened.

But he could not come.

Instead he was angry.

He eventually came to see me that evening, around seven o’clock. The compassion felt half hearted. And in that moment I realized something devastating.

Even my life felt like it carried very little value.

What made everything worse was what followed. Somehow rumors began spreading. I was taunted for what I had done. I was accused of doing it for attention, as if pain like that could ever be a performance.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

But who would know?

Who would ever truly know what I felt that night? What it took for a person who had fought so hard to stay strong to finally collapse?

The truth is that no one can love you enough to save you from yourself if you are the one choosing to drink poison.

And that realization was its own kind of pain.

Living through that moment. Hiding my scars for months. Trying to love myself again after feeling betrayed by my own hands.

Time has a strange way of softening memories. One day I will forget exactly how it felt to be sitting on that floor.

But the body remembers.

The body remembers everything.

It remembers the pain. It remembers the moment you broke. And it remembers the moment you chose to survive.

And strangely, when I look back now, I do not only see weakness.

I see strength.

Because if I had not stopped where I did that night, I might have done something even worse.

And the fact that I stopped there tells me something important.

Even in the darkest moment of my life, some part of me still chose to live.

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Personal

[From the Diaries]

To you it was a white lie. Maybe it was.

But the way you lied to my face, I couldn’t comprehend it. And it wasn’t just one lie. It was one lie after another, built to protect the first lie you told.

I understand where it came from. You were afraid I would get mad if I knew the truth. But even then, the right thing would have been to say it honestly. Instead you lied and snuck around behind my back, expecting me to believe you. It made me feel stupid for trusting your words.

Right now my biggest fear is not that you would talk to other girls. My biggest fear is that you would do things like this that could destroy our life together. But in that moment it felt like the same pattern. You were trying to hide something you knew I would disapprove of, so you chose to lie and do it behind my back.

And when you realized you had been caught, suddenly it was “I’m sorry, okay,” followed by explanations and justifications. “It just happened.”

Then five minutes later it became, “Ana meehunna vaahaka dhahka iru okay dho.”

And I have to say this clearly. Even if my intention was never wrong, after everything that happened, after you spoke to multiple people behind my back while we were together, even romantically, you still felt comfortable throwing that at me to get yourself out of trouble. The deflection was unbelievable. All because you were upset that I was upset at you for lying directly to my face.

Every day right now I am trying to understand whether we can actually build a stable life together. Whether we can even have healthy arguments. Because disagreements will always happen in any relationship. But every time we fight, it turns into chaos.

I was upset. I was hurt. And somehow you got angry at me for not getting over it fast enough.

I would have gotten over it. I always do eventually. But you did not give me the space to process it. Instead you tried to turn the whole situation around on me and justify your behaviour.

And just to explain why I asked you to come with me that day. I wanted to eat healthy. I wanted to go to Café Ier. I wanted to do something simple with you instead of sitting alone. That is why I dragged you along.

But I could barely even do that. I was so shaken that I had to cancel my dress fitting.

You looked me in the eye, gave me your word that you would never do it again, and I realized I could not believe what you were saying anymore. And somehow you still had the audacity to get mad at me for that.

It made me think about something else. What if we were travelling and something like this happened again? What if I was somewhere far away with you and could not leave? What would happen then? Would you give me space to process it? Would you even be sorry? Or would you just throw the one thing from the past that you hold over me as your wild card?

I was angry and hurt that you lied to my face.
I was even more angry that you kept trying to justify it.
And I nearly lost it when you started deflecting and acting like this behaviour was nothing.

You brought up the past very quickly when it suited you.

I think you expected me to cave. To put up with your rudeness even while I was hurt. But I would not.

Your behaviour was manipulative. Saying “I’m sorry, okay” while giving me no time to process anything. First trying over and over to lie your way out of it, and when that stopped working, immediately dragging the past into the conversation. The apologies disappeared the moment it became convenient for you.

If I am yelling or shouting at you, you should actually be less worried. I only do that when I still feel safe enough to fight.

I go quiet when I no longer feel safe.

And the moment you started deflecting and pointing things at me instead of taking responsibility for the thing that caused this entire situation, I stopped feeling safe.

When I make mistakes with you, I give you time to process them. I do not demand instant forgiveness. I let you feel whatever you need to feel.

Not to mention the last time you were upset, your way of processing it was saying horrible things about X and his family to me. You made it clear that I had to sit there and listen to it. It was disturbing, but I still tolerated it because I thought that was what you needed to get through the moment.

And now you cannot even give me a few minutes to process what you did without trying to turn it against me.

After everything that happened, you were clearly in the wrong. Yet somehow you still found a way to throw stones at me.

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[From the Diaries]

I never liked this feeling. The feeling of extreme palpitations. The bad kind of nervous, like something is dreadfully about to go wrong.

It has been happening more often lately.

At first I brushed it off. I told myself maybe I was just becoming a more anxious person. But that never used to be me. I’ve only ever been anxious when there was an actual situation in front of me. Being anxious for no reason, with nothing happening, felt very off brand.

But it’s been happening anyway.

It’s life now.

I don’t like being afraid. But I am. Constantly waiting for something to go wrong. Constantly doubting myself. Sometimes even hating myself.

The version of me that learned to love herself is also the version that learned to stand up for herself.

And I’m not who I was a year ago.

In many ways, I’m grateful for that. Because everything I became since then was an attempt to protect myself from ever going through that kind of pain again.

But the version I became is a little sketchy.

She’s not entirely good. She colors outside the lines sometimes. She bends the truth a little. Lies to herself a little.

And she makes choices the old version of me probably wouldn’t have made.

Sometimes I look at her and wonder if she’s healing, or if she’s just surviving in ways she doesn’t fully recognize yet.

Maybe that’s what happens when you rebuild yourself after being broken. You don’t come back exactly the same. You come back sharper. A little rougher around the edges. A little more guarded.

And maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Because the girl I used to be would have let the world break her twice.

This version of me won’t.

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[From the Diaries]

The way this year started, I should’ve known not to hope for anything more.

It started with this feeling: a tight knot in my chest, nerves pulling at each other, my body showing all the signs of discomfort. A never-ending anticipation of things going from wrong to worse. A constant cycle of terrible and utterly disheartening surprises.

That was the start of this year.

It’s September now. My heart is in a bigger mess than it used to be. The pain is the same, but I’m sabotaging myself more. Maybe I just got tired of being good.

When I felt this way at the end of last year, that’s when life nearly collapsed. I had someone with me who would love and comfort me. But for reasons I will never understand, none of that seemed comforting.

I’m a fully grown adult who has managed every crisis I’ve ever come across on my own, and believe me, there have been quite a few. But this time, for some reason, it felt heavier. Like I could no longer pick myself up off the floor. This time it felt like me against the world.

And in all my adult years, I did something I had never done before. I called my little brother for help. I asked him to come because I wasn’t feeling well. I hoped that if I talked to him, I would feel a little better.

I think it helped. But it didn’t take away the sorrow.

This year was always meant to be shitty. It’s my fault for believing it would be different.

I will tell you this though: being knocked down when you’ve been nothing but good hurts your soul. But when you start to feel like maybe you did something to deserve it, it attacks your mind instead of your soul.

Both are personal hells.

And I don’t know which one I would choose if I had the option. Probably the one that rids me of any guilt, because these days guilt has become my poison.

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[From the Diaries]

I loved us. God, I loved us so much it hurt.

From the very beginning, I gave myself to something that wasn’t whole. You weren’t really free, not then, but you told me you loved me. You told me I was yours. And I wanted to believe you so badly that I did. Even when the truth was right in front of me, staring me down, I closed my eyes and clung to your words.

Those months of waiting for you to finally choose me, to finally make space for me, nearly drove me insane. Months of questions with no answers. Months of waking up with a knot in my chest, wondering if I was temporary, if I was disposable. And every time I thought about walking away, you pulled me back in with those words: “I love you.” I wanted to believe them so badly that I let them ruin me.

And still, there were moments that felt like magic. Like that silly afternoon when BML wouldn’t work and I couldn’t pay for the lilies I wanted to buy for myself. I remember standing there, defeated, ready to leave them behind. And then you pulled out cash, like you had been sent by the universe to save me from walking away empty-handed. Such a small thing, but I carried it in my heart like proof that you would always be there for me. Proof that you could be the one.

But the truth is, I spent so long bargaining with myself. Telling myself that if I loved you enough for both of us, it would somehow be enough. Telling myself that your words mattered more than your actions, even when your actions told me over and over again that I wasn’t enough. I fought for us until I had nothing left to give.

And then, when I was already cracked open and bleeding, you finally fell in love with me. Or at least you said you did. The cruelest twist of all. It was everything I thought I wanted, but by then I was already too broken to carry it. My heart was so heavy with hurt that there was no room left for the love you were finally trying to give.

Still, I stayed. I believed you again and again, even after every broken promise. Until the last one. The one that shattered me in a way I don’t think I can come back from. That was when I finally understood: life with you would always be this way. Always me fighting. Always me begging. Always me hurting.

Now the pictures from those days show up sometimes, and every time they cut through me. In them, I look so in love, so devoted, like you were my entire world. And you were. But now I see the truth more clearly. Those pictures are proof of how deeply I loved you, and how alone I was in loving us.

People used to ask me why I stayed. I would always say the same thing: because you were my best friend. Because there was nothing in the world we couldn’t talk about. But the truth is, you were also the person who hurt me the most. You were the wound I kept pressing my hand against, hoping one day it would finally stop bleeding.

Maybe this is my penance. For falling for a man who wasn’t fully mine. For ignoring every warning sign. For believing that love could somehow change the truth.

I’ve tried to imagine my life without you. And it doesn’t necessarily look happier. Just quieter. Just lonelier. Maybe freer to make better choices, choices that wouldn’t include you. But even now, I don’t know if that freedom would feel worth the emptiness of not having you in my life.

This love has wrecked me in ways I don’t know if I will ever fully recover from. I won’t come out of it the same person.

Maybe one day I’ll settle for something safer. Something calmer. Something convenient and steady. Something that doesn’t tear me apart the way loving you did.

But even then, I know I’ll still remember the version of us I believed in.

What hurts the most is realizing that I never really knew you. Not completely. You gave me pieces of yourself, fragments, glimpses. Enough to keep me hoping. Enough to keep me tethered.

And I called it love because I didn’t know any better.

Maybe there’s someone out there who will love you the way I couldn’t. Someone who won’t have to beg for pieces of you or twist themselves into something smaller just to keep you.

Because I am tired.

Tired of bending myself around your edges.
Tired of holding back parts of you just so I could survive loving you.
Tired of betraying myself every time I chose you over me.

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[From the Diaries]

Can you please, just for once, be honest with me? Did you relapse, and are you struggling to stop? Is that why you’re lying to me?

Are you avoiding the truth because you think I’ll be angry, so instead you keep choosing to hurt me over and over again?

I’m not strong enough for this.

I thought my tears would move you. I thought seeing me break down again and again would make your heart ache. I thought it would matter to you.

But it feels like it doesn’t.

It feels like my pain means nothing to you. Like I’m standing right in front of you, begging you to love me the right way, and I’m talking to a wall.

And all the while, you keep hurting me.

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[From the Diaries]

I’m sorry. This is a very difficult place to be in. When a relationship is already damaged and slowly dying, trying to repair it while carrying all the wounds it has already caused both of us is incredibly hard.

I wanted to believe you wouldn’t do anything that would hurt me again. But it turns out that’s not true. And it happened so soon. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

You say you understand me. You say you want to be my safe space. But right now, those feel like words without much truth behind them. And when someone is trying to move past a hundred painful things, even one small incident can bring all of those hundred things rushing back.

I understand that you’re not well right now. And honestly, I’m not either. We’re both in difficult places, and I don’t know if either of us has the patience or emotional space to hold the other properly.

Sometimes two broken people care about each other deeply, but still can’t make it work. Two broken people can’t always love each other in the way they both need.

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[From the Diaries]

Look, being in touch with you isn’t doing me any good right now. I told you earlier that we needed to take a break because I needed the space, but that was ignored, and things have only escalated from bad to worse. At this point, I need to go no contact, and I need you to respect that.

These recycled conversations are exhausting. You did things that made me angry, and now you act like you don’t understand why I’m reacting the way I am. This didn’t come out of nowhere. Your actions and the way you’ve handled things brought us here, yet you keep acting like you don’t know where any of this is coming from.

So please, leave me alone. I don’t know for how long, and honestly, I’m okay if it ends up being forever, because being in contact with you is bringing out the worst in me.

The only reason I haven’t blocked you is because I thought we could remain civil. But you continue to cross the boundaries I’ve tried to set.

I know you’re going through a difficult time, and I’m sorry for that. But right now I can’t help you. I need to help myself.

So please, for the sake of both of us, just leave me alone.

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[From the Diaries]

After my last run about two weeks ago, I really thought I was getting back into my running and fitness groove. But since then, two weeks have passed. I’ve planned in my head so many times to go to the gym or go for a run. And then when the moment actually comes, I just can’t do it.

It’s not physical. It’s more like I’m mentally drained, almost frozen.

A lot of people say that challenging yourself helps you get out of whatever stuck place you’re in. And maybe that’s true for some people. But honestly, when I’m in a crash, going for a run or working out doesn’t magically fix it. I’ll finish the workout and come back home and continue crashing. Sometimes your mind just has to take its natural toll before it settles again.

But today I was tired of waiting for that.

So I challenged myself. Not because I thought it would suddenly fix everything, but because I wanted to prove to myself that I could still show up, even while feeling like this.

So here I am, on this run.

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[From the Diaries]

The tweet wasn’t even a direct call-out. It was a general reflection. But you think everything is about you because you can’t step outside your own self-importance long enough to empathize with someone you’ve wronged.

I don’t owe you explanations for my tweets, but since you clearly don’t get it: it was about how that kind of language is used to guilt-trip people into forgiving abuse and betrayal.

But if the shoe fits, please fucking wear it. And I bet you know that it damn well does.

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