Authentically You

This writing is about love and relationships—because sometimes letting a part of yourself go is the only way you realize how much of life you were missing while holding on.

I saw a quote recently that really stuck with me:

“To love someone completely is to agree to a greater life, and that agreement also comes with parting ways with your smaller one—even if it was your safe haven, even if it was once the answer to a question previously asked.”

And honestly, it hurt a little to read—because it felt true.

Looking back, I missed out on a lot in my relationship. Not because I didn’t care. Not because love wasn’t there. But because I was scared. I was insecure. I was clinging to what felt safe, even when that version of safety was quietly limiting me.

Change is hard. Nobody really talks about how confronting it can be. It asks you to step away from what you know, to question patterns you’ve built your life around. And instead of leaning into that discomfort, I ran from it. I avoided the hard conversations. I avoided growth. I told myself I was protecting my peace, when in reality, I was protecting my fear.

And now, with distance, that’s where the regret comes in.

Not regret in a way that erases the love, but regret in the sense that clarity comes late sometimes. You don’t always see what you’re doing while you’re doing it. It’s only once you’re out of it that things start to make sense.

Maybe he’ll read this. Maybe he won’t. But this isn’t about trying to change the past. It’s about being honest now.

I’m starting to unwrap what my version of “feeling safe” actually was—and how disordered it had become. How safety, for me, often meant control. Predictability. Staying small enough that nothing could shake me. I’m realizing that what I called comfort was often just avoidance dressed up as self-protection.

Right now, I don’t have answers about the future, and I’m okay admitting that. I’m slowly pulling apart pieces of myself, trying to understand why fear felt safer than growth, why I held onto what was familiar instead of what could have helped me expand.

I want to talk more about insecurities—how they sneak into relationships without us noticing. How they push us into comparison, even when comparison has no place in love. How they convince us that we’re behind, or not enough, or somehow doing life wrong.

So many of us do this. We stay where we feel safe. We avoid change until it’s forced on us. And we don’t realize what we’re running from until we finally stop.

This is me learning that loving someone deeply sometimes means being brave enough to let go of the version of yourself that once felt safe—but was never meant to last.

There’s so much more to come. This is just the beginning.

Nic xxx