Before healing, there was survival. And survival demanded offerings—quiet, invisible sacrifices I made in the name of peace, safety, and acceptance. I didn’t call them sacrifices at the time. I called them choices. I called them love. I called them being a “good person.” But the truth is, I gave up parts of myself to stay alive in spaces that didn’t make room for my full humanity.
I gave up my voice, because silence kept things calm. I learned early that being quiet could keep the ground from shaking. I held in truths like breath underwater, waiting for the storm to pass. I thought I was being wise; I thought I was being kind. But slowly, I lost fluency in my own language.
I gave up my needs, convinced that other people’s comfort was more important than my discomfort. I contorted myself into versions that wouldn’t disturb anyone. I made myself easy to be around—at my own expense. I believed that if I could hold it all, I was strong. But I wasn’t strong. I was disappearing.
I gave up my boundaries in exchange for a counterfeit kind of belonging. I let people stay who had no right to be close. I allowed harm (explained it away and called it devotion). I swallowed the warning signs and called it resilience. But what I really lost was my own protection.
I gave up my weirdness—dimmed my color, tucked away the wild, wondering parts of me. I adapted. I performed. I tried to belong by erasing the parts of me that didn’t match the room. And when they finally accepted me, they weren’t accepting me; just the version I’d made digestible.
I gave up my body—not in one moment, but in thousands of small ones. I ignored its signals, denied its needs, let it be used and pushed past its limits. I treated it like a machine. A tool. I didn’t ask what it needed until it collapsed.
I gave up time: years of it spent performing roles that never fit, reciting lines I didn’t write. I was dutiful, reliable, and absent from myself. I lived on someone else’s stage, until the silence backstage grew too loud to bear.
I gave up imagination. Tucked my visionary mind into the drawer marked “immature.” I stopped speaking in metaphor. I stopped letting wonder guide me. I got practical. I got serious. The magic went quiet.
I gave up tears. I taught myself to hold grief like a secret; turned feeling into strategy. I became good at looking composed while breaking inside. No one needed to know. I didn’t want to be seen as weak. And so I locked the door on my own softness.
I gave up truth—not always with lies, but with omissions. I let people love the version of me that never asked for too much. I smiled through the distortion. I played along. It was safer to be liked than real. But being seen through a mask is just another kind of loneliness.
And finally, I gave up freedom. I did what was expected. I followed the rules, stayed in line, didn’t make noise. I survived by complying. But surviving isn’t the same as living; and obedience is a cage that rewards you for forgetting the key was always in your pocket.
These were the trades I made before I knew there was another way—not because I was weak, but because I was adapting. And now, I am unlearning. Slowly, surely, I am reclaiming each piece I left behind. I did what I had to do to survive.
But survival is no longer the goal.
Living is.
And with living comes remembering: I was not alone in my forgetting. Mine was not the only voice swallowed. The people who asked me to give myself up—they were carrying inherited maps too. Maps built on obedience, on fitting in, on silencing the inconvenient truths of their own lives. They weren’t monsters. They were mirrors. They had also made trades they didn’t speak of. And somewhere beneath the roles we were all playing, someone in each of us was quietly aching to be real.
There is grief in realizing how many of us betrayed ourselves for acceptance. But there’s also grace—grace in knowing we did not invent this way of being (we were shown it). We were modeled survival cloaked as virtue. We were taught sacrifice as a way to love, to belong, to avoid shame.
I can see now: the ones who asked me to shrink were shrinking too. The ones who expected silence had no safe place for their own noise. The ones who crossed my boundaries may have never been taught to find or respect their own.
This doesn’t erase the cost. It doesn’t justify the harm. But it does soften the edges. I no longer need to carry it all like proof. I can set some of it down now—not in denial, but in understanding.
We were all just trying to make it through systems that made us choose between authenticity and acceptance; between truth and safety; between aliveness and approval.
I look at those old versions of myself—and of them—with something like reverence. For enduring. For making it through. For holding on long enough to want more. For reaching toward healing even when we didn’t have the language yet.
This is where I write a new kind of ending.
Not a clean one.
But a connected one.
A rooted one.
If you’ve known the ache of trading yourself for safety, I see you. If you’ve worn masks so long they began to feel like skin, I see you. If you’re somewhere between loss and becoming—this space is for you.
We do not have to earn belonging here. We bring our weirdness. Our grief. Our resilience. Our unmet needs and strange truths and stifled tears.
You are welcome in your full voice.
Welcome in your full body.
Welcome in your full, holy hunger to come home to yourself.
And maybe (if we’re lucky) we’ll meet each other there.
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