I have never had the courage to say these things out loud. And, in a way, my fingers are shaking even in this letter. But I need to get something out of myself – not to get sympathy, not to get answers, but simply because the silence is suffocating me.
I am that girl who thought she had finally found love. It started as a relationship that gave me hope, warmth, the feeling that someone understood me. I loved him, admired him, I held him in my heart as something rare. And when we got married, I thought my new life was beginning, the life I had dreamed of. But very quickly, everything started to change. Not with an explosion, but with small pieces that fell one by one: silence, coldness, lack of connection. I was speaking with feeling, he was living with logic. I was trying to open up, he was closing himself off more. And in the end, he left. He decided for both of us. He asked for a divorce.
Sometimes I say to myself: how could someone you loved unconditionally hurt you? How could they make promises and then abandon you like you were a mistake that should never have been made? And the worst thing is that now that I'm away from him, I can't even feel myself. As if I were suspended, in an empty space between nothingness and a hope that I don't know where it comes from.
I've struggled with anxiety that I've kept bottled up for years. I've pretended to be strong, when in reality, all it took was one word to make me burst into tears. It wasn't easy for me to ask for help. When I did, I felt like I was burdening others. Even now, people tell me to be grateful for everything I have, but no one understands what it's like to wake up every day and feel like a tired soul in a body that's barely holding on.
I often ask myself: would I have avoided all this if I hadn't loved him so much? Would it have been better if I hadn't believed him when he told me he would love me forever? And when I remember the sleepless nights I spent imagining him with another woman by his side, I feel a kind of slow death inside me. Because even though I don't want him back, it hurts me to no longer be in the heart of someone who was everything to me.
Today, I'm trying to build a new self. In a house that doesn't feel like mine, in a life that feels like something foreign to me. I've left everything behind, but the wounds are still there. And sometimes it feels like neither time nor myself will forgive me, for everything I've been through, for everything I endured, for everything I miss, for everything I couldn't be.
I no longer want to hide the pain behind a smile that doesn't belong to me. This is my story – a story of love, disappointment and survival. And if anyone is reading this who is in my shoes: I know it feels like this will never end. But the only way to move forward is to talk, to tell, to share. Even if we are not ready to speak out loud, let's write. Because silence is no longer a safe place.
- Written for Anabel by an anonymous woman, for the “Untold Stories” column – the haven where we recount those moments when the heart wants to speak, whether about the good or the difficult, about the deepest feelings that we don't want to keep inside. If you too would like to share your story, write to us at [email protected] .
