What It Cost Me to Stay
June 06, 2025
I’m starting to see what it truly cost me to stay loyal to someone who never loved me. And while I grieve that, I’m also learning not to carry shame for surviving the only way I knew how.
It’s hard to admit how long I let it go on for.
How long I held onto the hope that maybe — just maybe — she’d change. That if I was good enough, quiet enough, kind enough, she’d finally meet me where I needed her to.
I see it now for what it was.
Not love.
Not family.
Not safety.
Just survival.
And it cost me almost everything.
There’s a part of me that feels ashamed.
Ashamed that I stayed.
Ashamed that I kept showing up.
Ashamed that I kept opening the door, again and again, to someone who never once truly walked through it.
But I know where that shame comes from —
It comes from her voice, not mine.
From a lifetime of being told that my worth was tied to how well I kept the peace.
From believing that staying quiet was love, and leaving was betrayal.
I don’t carry that belief anymore.
But some days, the residue still sticks.
What it cost me:
- My sanity, at times
- The intimacy I longed for, but never trusted
- The friendships I couldn’t fully receive because I was still proving my value elsewhere
- And most painfully… it cost me myself.
The version of me who could’ve flourished sooner.
The version of me who never got to exist because I was too busy managing her emotions.
That’s the grief I’m sitting with now.
But I also see this:
I shouldn’t feel ashamed of that version of me — the one who stayed.
I should feel proud of the version of me who finally stood up and said no more.
Because that part of me wasn’t weak — he was surviving.
And this version of me — the one writing these words — is reclaiming what was lost.
I may never get back what I missed.
But I will never again give myself away to someone who doesn’t know what love is.
What it cost me to stay was everything.
But what I gain by leaving is finally… me.