The Heartbreak of Choosing Myself
The silence these days is deafening. It’s not the quiet of peace, but the silence left behind after I made the choice to excommunicate myself from my own blood. I know that word—excosounds dramatic, even biblical. But how else do you describe the total removal of a family from your life?
The catalyst? A funeral and a fight. It was the same old, tired story: drama, pettiness, the relentless, suffocating cycle of judgment. And in that final moment, something inside me just snapped. I didn’t yell. I didn’t explain. I simply walked away, blocked the numbers, unfriended the accounts, and shut the door on decades of inherited toxicity.
I expected a void. But there’s a constant, low-level grief of mourning people who are still alive, still breathing, but who are dead to me—by my own choice.
But beneath the heartbreak, there is something else, something I never anticipated: liberation.
For years, I was a performer in my own life, constantly playing a role designed to soothe their insecurities and help them overcome their situation. The drama and the pettiness was always there: I think I am better than, I have so many degrees, when will it be enough, my marriage isn’t perfect as “pretended”.
Now, I don’t have to manage anyone’s emotions but my own. I don’t have to brace myself before every face to face encounter. I don’t have to censor my triumphs for fear of their jealousy or hide my failures for fear of their judgment. I can breathe.
The real shift, the one that makes the liberation possible and the heartbreak so excruciating, is a realization I had to come to, sitting alone in this new, silent world: I was never truly loved or accepted for who I am. I was needed to make their lives convenient.
I was loved for the person what I did for them, for the role I played in their narrative, or for the convenience I provided. But the real me—the one with the crazy dreams, the relentless ambition, the strange adventures, and the different perspective—that person was constantly being watched, criticized, or simply judged. Every piece of their “love” came with a string attached, a condition, a silent demand that I contort myself into a shape that was acceptable to them.
When you are truly loved, your success doesn’t spark jealousy, it sparks joy.
When you are truly accepted, your boundaries are respected, not seen as a personal attack.
When you are truly seen, you don’t have to fight to be heard over petty drama.
Coming to terms with the fact that the people who were supposed to be my bedrock were my deepest source of trauma is a grief unlike any other. It’s the grief of a lifetime of wasted effort, of seeking validation from people who didn’t know how to love.
So, here I am. Excommunicated. Heartbroken, but also standing taller than I ever have before.
I’m building a family of choice—friends who celebrate me for exactly who I am. I am finally allowing myself to become the person I was always meant to be.
To anyone else going through a similar situation, just know that choosing yourself is not selfish. It is survival. It is the bravest thing you can ever do.
The heartbreak of losing them is real, but the freedom of finding myself is worth the cost.💖
