It has recently hit me how much I am still expecting different from people who have already shown me exactly who they are.
Maybe it crept up on me after going no contact with my mother. I didn't realize at first how much I was still reaching toward certain family members, hoping they would step into the space she left. Hoping someone would show up differently.
They didn't. And the more I enforced boundaries, necessary and overdue boundaries, the clearer it became. They didn't know how to act because what I had taken for connection was never really that. It was access. It was function. It was someone to vent to, someone to loop into the drama, someone to send a happy Monday to and call it love.
Take the access away and there is nothing underneath it.
I need to stop spending energy waiting for depth that was never there and accept that an empty happy Monday is all it will ever be. And that is not a reflection of my worth. It is a reflection of theirs.
There is a sadness in it that is hard to put into words. Not dramatic. Just a quiet, empty settling. An ok, it is what it is that sits heavier than it sounds.
Something about finally seeing clearly that the energy was never moving in both directions. That I was bringing something real into spaces that were never capable of receiving it, let alone returning it.
The work I have done, the boundaries enforced repeatedly and strongly, in ways none of them expected, has shifted everything. And this next phase is one where they are no longer prominent. Maybe they never will be again.
That is both the loss and the liberation.
It feels equal parts necessary and a little lonely.
But when I really sit with that loneliness I realize it was always there. They were never able to meet me where I was. There was always something underneath it, an agenda, a pay off, a need being served that had nothing to do with me.
The loneliness of being in relationships that looked like connection but weren't is its own particular kind of empty. You can't name it because from the outside it looks like you have people. But you know something is missing and you can't explain why. I didn't realize it at all because I was playing along in my roles. A lot of this has hit me in phases and I've had to really sit with this stuff for a while. What am I feeling. Am I ok? The answer is always yes. Is it easy? Not even close. As lonely as it feels, I know it's what's right for me in this phase of my life.
This loneliness is different. It has a shape. It has a reason. And that makes it something I can actually sit with instead of something that just quietly hollows me out from the inside.
One kind of lonely is invisible and confusing. The other is clear. Clear is something I can work with.
For me, the healing has meant turning inward for the things that were never given. Learning to provide for myself what I spent years hoping would come from somewhere else.
It's okay to choose yourself. You owe it to yourself to heal.