You can miss someone and still acknowledge that what they were doing to you wasn’t ok.
Both can be true at the same time. đź’”
I think this is one of the most confusing parts of grieving a relationship. We expect our hearts to somehow catch up with what our minds already know. We think once we recognize the dysfunction, the betrayal, the manipulation, the mistreatment, or whatever finally made us realize something had to change, we should automatically stop loving the person.
But hearts don’t work that way. You can know you made the right decision and still cry over what you lost. You can know a relationship wasn’t healthy and still remember the parts that were beautiful.
You can remember laughing together.
You can miss their voice.
You can miss the friendship.
You can miss the person you thought they were.
You can even miss the life you thought you were going to have together.
And none of that means you were wrong for acknowledging what was happening to you. Sometimes we feel like we have to rewrite the entire relationship in order to justify leaving it.
If they hurt us, then everything must have been terrible.
Every memory must have been fake.
Every good moment must somehow become bad. But life is rarely that simple.
There may have been genuine love alongside genuine hurt. There may have been beautiful memories alongside deeply painful ones. There may have been someone you considered your best friend who was also doing things that were breaking your heart.
Both can be true.
And maybe that’s why grief can feel so complicated. Because you’re not only grieving what hurt you.
You’re grieving what you loved.
You’re grieving what was good.
You’re grieving what you hoped could be restored.
You’re grieving the future you imagined.
And sometimes you’re grieving a person who is still very much alive.
Please don’t mistake missing someone for a sign that you should return to something that was hurting you. Missing them doesn’t erase what happened. Loving them doesn’t make what happened acceptable. Forgiving them doesn’t require you to pretend it didn’t hurt. And acknowledging the good doesn’t require you to minimize the bad.
Healing gives us permission to hold the whole truth.
I loved you.
I miss you.
There were parts of us that were beautiful.
And what was happening to me was not ok.
Those truths do not cancel one another out. Sometimes healing isn’t choosing which one is true.
Sometimes healing is finally becoming strong enough to acknowledge that both are. đź’”