Not Meant to Stay, but Meant to Change Me

The right person at the wrong time can still change you in the most beautiful way. They can open your heart in a way you didn’t even realize had closed. They can remind you of a version of yourself that you thought was gone, or maybe a version you didn’t even know existed. And even if it doesn’t work out, that alone can be one of the most meaningful gifts life gives you.

Some people never fully open again after their first love. They carry their heart differently. A little more guarded. A little more careful. But when you do feel something real again, you just know. You feel it in your body. You feel yourself soften. You feel yourself return to yourself.

It’s like, “Oh. There I am.”

And the realization hits — it was always within you.
You didn’t lose your ability to love. You just forgot what it felt like.
And that has been one of the most beautiful parts of this journey for me.

I learned to love myself again.
To respect myself.
To listen to myself.

Not all at once. Not perfectly. But day by day, through mistakes, through people who weren’t right for me, through friendships that fell apart, through moments where I felt lost. For some reason, after every ending — no matter how painful — I always came out seeing the beauty in it.

Because endings are also beginnings.
They create space for something new.

I learned this early in life. I was on my own from a young age, and I had to learn how to let go of people I thought were my chosen family — people I loved so deeply it felt like they lived inside my bones. Letting them go hurt in a way I can’t fully describe. But I knew I had to.

And even now, at 37, I’m still figuring out what chosen family means.
Friendships feel different at this age.
Everyone wants connection, but not many people really show up. It’s the same with dating. People like the idea of love, the idea of building something real, but they don’t always want to put in the actual effort, time, or consistency.

We’ve become a very self-protective society.
Sometimes selfish.
Sometimes avoidant.

But even through all of this — there has been so much beauty.

The beauty of starting over.
The beauty of realizing I’m not starting from zero.
I’m starting from experience.

And the thing is, we were never something defined. It wasn’t a relationship with clear lines or titles. It just was what it was — two people who felt something real in the space between. Some might even call it a “situationship,” but I think that label gets thrown around loosely these days. It doesn’t really capture the depth of what it felt like. Because even in that in-between space, I felt something true. Some of those feelings were healthy, some were not, but they were mine. And that matters. Because it showed me that my heart is still alive. That I can still be moved. That I can still open. Even if the situation wasn’t ideal, the feeling itself was real. And I needed to remember that about myself.

And maybe that’s the point of all of this. We’re not supposed to have every answer. We’re not supposed to know how every story ends. We just learn to keep choosing ourselves, our hearts, our growth. We learn to stay open even when it scares us. We learn to love in a way that is honest and slow and intentional. And in that openness, life keeps revealing more — more love, more connection, more belonging. So I’ll keep choosing to stay open. To love and to be loved. To find my people. To build my own kind of home — wherever I go. Because I know now that the home I was searching for has always lived within me.