Narcissism.

Damage does not start at once, it starts slowly.. You begin to justify things you would never have allowed before, to excuse disrespect, to question reactions that are completely normal. And one day you find yourself asking for forgiveness for feeling hurt, for setting boundaries or for expressing needs that should never bother the one who claims to love you. Little by little you start to doubt your intuition, your emotions and even yourself. You wonder if you're exaggerating, if you're too sensitive, or if you're the problem. And there is one of the deepest wounds. Because as you try to understand the other person, you stop understanding yourself, as you try to save the relationship, you start to lose yourself, as you attempt to prove that you're enough, you forget that you never had to prove anything. And the saddest thing is that often they do not break you with great gestures, they break you slowly, with indifference, with silences, with reproaches disguised as love and with faults that never belonged to you. Until one day you wake up and understand something that changes everything: who loves you doesn't need to make you smaller to feel big, nor make you constantly doubt your worth. So the road back begins. You trust yourself again, you listen to yourself again, you recognize yourself in front of the mirror again and you understand that you were not difficult, or exaggerated, or not enough... You were just trying to bloom in a place where the leaves kept plucking from you... And when you finally get it, you breathe, because you find out you weren't losing your mind... You were losing yourself. 💚 Copyright © 2026. Julia Gutiérrez Don't erase the author, share with respect. © Photo created with AI