I Am Tired, But I Am Also Still Here

 I need to stop lying to myself.

It wasn’t one mistake.

It wasn’t one moment of weakness.

I hurt him multiple times. I broke his trust more than once. I sought comfort where I shouldn’t have. I lied because I was scared — scared of confrontation, scared of being abandoned, scared of losing the only place I thought felt like home. And in that fear, I became someone I don’t fully recognise.

And yes, I know those choices changed everything.

But I also need to say this without flinching:

My wrongs do not justify the way love turned into punishment.

What followed was not just anger or heartbreak — it was control, verbal brutality, emotional violence and moments that scared my own body. The relationship stopped being about repair and became about power. I carry guilt, but guilt is not consent for cruelty.

Both truths exist, and I am tired of trying to make one erase the other.

I hurt him.

He hurt me.

And neither of us came out untouched.

What confuses me the most is how my mind still clings to the softness — his chest, his presence, the familiar warmth my body instinctively searches for when I break down. It frightens me how comfort and fear share the same face in my memory.

Lately, I’ve realised I’m not even angry.

I’m just exhausted.

I don’t want to be strong anymore. I don’t want to keep proving how much I can carry. I want to be held. I want to be taken care of without conditions, without the threat of disappearance.

And every time this desire rises, my mind betrays me. It drifts to him telling me how he handled her household problems, how she would crumble without him, how he was her backbone. And it aches to remember how effortlessly he could walk in and out of my life, while I stayed steady, waiting, adjusting, absorbing.

With her, he was needed.

With me, he was optional.

That realisation doesn’t just hurt — it hollows.

I have been told I suffer from “elder daughter syndrome,” and the more I observe my life, the more it rings true. I have always been the one who carries, consoles, understands, explains, softens conflict. I make space for everyone else’s emotions while shrinking my own. I mistake self-sacrifice for loyalty and endurance for love.

So of course I turned everything inward.

Of course I made his anger my responsibility.

Of course I convinced myself I deserved the pain because I caused the first wound.

This is what happens when a woman grows up believing peace is her duty and rest must be earned through suffering.

And so I stayed. I justified. I defended. I softened his sharpness until I almost forgot my own boundaries. I loved like it was a responsibility instead of a choice.

Even now, I compare. I imagine him happy. I imagine him fulfilled. I feel jealousy, grief, longing, shame — all folded into one quiet ache. I wake up hoping for a message I know will not come. I touch my own body and stop midway when his memory floods in and turns into tears.

I am exhausted from policing my own feelings.

But somewhere beneath the weight, a quiet truth lives:

Maybe the relationship didn’t only break because of my mistakes.

Maybe it also broke because it was never safe enough to survive them.

And maybe being strong all these years doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to be held.

I don’t want to live in a courtroom of blame anymore — his or mine.

I want to live in a space where pain is acknowledged but does not define my entire identity.

I am tired.

But I am still trying.

And for now, that has to be enough.