Every time I see your name pop up on social media I get a weird feeling in my gut. Part of me wants to delete you so you stop crossing my mind, but the other part of me just can’t bring myself to do it. I find myself thinking about you and what what our relationship consisted of, and the way we fell apart.

You promised you’d still be there but now I can see how little your promises actually mean when I have to tell people you’re no longer in my life and your name makes me sick as it rolls off my tongue.

It always leads me back to us, to the way our friendship even formed and I realized it was all forced. It was always me thinking I could change you, that I could heal you, that I could fix you. I wanted to be the one person you let in while you kept the rest of the world shut out. I wanted to be the one who could really get to know you so I dug and dug until you let me in. And you did. But the worst part is that you actually started being there, you started trusting me, you started needing me and I started needing you, too.

You became the one person I always wanted to see, you became the one person I knew could make me happy when I wanted to shut out the world. You became the person who I forced my heart on but you gladly took it in the palm of you hands until you didn’t want it anymore. Until you found someone better. Until you decided I was too much for you.

I used to try to shrink down, to stop giving you pieces of my heart, I tried to reel in my emotions and become ‘smaller’ because that’s what you liked. I started to hide pieces of me because I wanted you to be happy, because I started associating your happiness with mine. I started becoming too much for you and you started trying to quiet me, to push me to the back, to make me feel like I wasn’t as important to you anymore. You changed your attitude depending on who was around, you made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and I went with it.

I started to change, I tried to be the person you wanted me to be by becoming less of who I am. I started to take everyone degrading comment and every back handed compliment to heart and I let those affect the person I was.

But I’ll never do that again.

I’ll never hide pieces of myself to make anyone more comfortable. I’ll never silence my voice to make yours seem louder. I’ll never but someone else’s happiness before my own. I’ll never act like my heart isn’t big just because you can’t handle the love. I’ll never make myself appear smaller so you can feel better about yourself.

I will be bold, I will love hard, I will share pieces of my heart and I won’t allow anyone to make me feel guilty for doing so.

I will be loud, I will make my voice heard, I will celebrate my accomplishments and do what I have to do to make myself happy regardless if it will make you happy because I’m not here for you, I’m here for me.

You leaving made me realize what we had wasn’t healthy and you weren’t as good as it gets. You leaving made me realize I deserved better – I deserved to be treated a lot better and I deserve someone who doesn’t think I’m too much because I’m not.

I deserve someone who loves me for me, who loves every inch of my heart and every cell of my being.

And I know he’s out there.

A real man isn’t intimidated by a woman, he doesn’t try to shrink her down and control her inside his tiny world. Instead, he lets her shine, he lets her be, he lets her heart radiate off the world and he encourages her be the person she was born to be.

I’m done being afraid to take up space, I’m done being afraid to be ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ for someone because as long as I am enough for myself that is enough for me.