There’s a strange kind of grief that comes with realizing you’ve been both the person trying to heal and the person making things harder for yourself at the exact same time.
The last six months taught me that growth is rarely clean. It doesn’t arrive with calm music and perfect decisions. Sometimes it looks like saying the wrong thing, reacting too emotionally, reaching for comfort in old habits or holding onto someone long after the connection stopped feeling safe for either of you. Sometimes it looks like watching yourself repeat patterns you promised you’d outgrow – and then having to sit with the disappointment of that honestly.
There was a relationship that mirrored back every unhealed part of me. The fear of abandonment. The need for reassurance. The desperation to fix what was already breaking. I confused intensity for love more times than I want to admit. And when things hurt, I didn’t always cope in healthy ways. I slipped backwards into something as a cry for help, then further back into something I thought I had already conquered. That setback embarrassed me at first. I treated it like proof that I hadn’t changed at all.
But healing isn’t invalidated by one bad night, one bad choice or one season where you lose your footing.
What matters is what happens after. Fuck – truly.
And after? I got quieter. More honest. Less interested in performing strength and more interested in actually building it. I started noticing how much energy I spent trying to earn love instead of simply receiving it. I learned that self-awareness without self-forgiveness becomes punishment. I learned that apologizing to others means very little if you keep speaking to yourself with cruelty afterward.
The hardest lesson was understanding that being a good person does not mean being a perfect one. You can hurt people unintentionally and still deserve compassion. You can outgrow behaviors without erasing the fact they happened. Accountability and forgiveness are not opposites. They belong together.
I don’t want to become someone who pretends the past didn’t happen. I want to become someone who can look directly at it without shame swallowing the whole story.
Because the truth is: I did mess up. In some moments, deeply. I loved poorly at times. I abandoned myself trying to hold onto things that were already fading. I let fear make decisions for me. But I also survived things I never thought I would survive. I became more self-aware. More grounded. More intentional. Softer, somehow, without becoming weaker.
And maybe that’s what growth really is.
Not becoming flawless.
Not becoming untouchable.
Just becoming more honest.
More responsible for your actions.
More forgiving toward your humanity.
More hopeful about your future.
These days, I don’t need to believe I’m perfect to believe I’m getting better. That is enough.
I forgive everyone who hurt me.
I forgive everyone I disappointed.
But most importantly, slowly and sincerely, I’m learning to forgive myself. That’s what matters the fucking most, sugars.
NORTH LET GO 