The relief of breaking up with him

I gave him so much of myself. And for months after I left, I beat myself up over it. I couldn’t forgive myself for who I’d been with him, for everything I’d accepted just to keep him. How could somebody treat me like I was nothing, and I’d still ask for more? That relationship changed the way I saw men. Trusting someone became hard. Trusting myself was even harder. But I stopped giving people permission to hurt me and make me feel like I had no worth. Leaving him and leaving the projects was the hardest, most painful thing I went through in my teens and early twenties. I’d gotten out, but I still had to live with everything I felt about myself. For a few years, I thought I couldn’t love anyone again. Some days, I thought I didn’t deserve to be loved at all. Then I met him. *Him.* The man I married. The man I had children with. The man who made me feel loved, wanted, and comfortable being the woman I was becoming. He wasn’t my first love. But he’s my last. And that’s another story. Another echo.