The Real Niche

by NK.

Tag: grief

  • ETA: TBD

    When I was a kid, I don’t think I ever really imagined myself becoming anything. Not because I had no imagination, I was a child, of course I had dreams. 

    But there is a difference between imagining something and believing you will actually get to live long enough to become it.

    By the time I was five, I had already experienced loss, change, and grief before I had the language, or the space, to understand it.

    Five is small. Five is supposed to be scraped knees, cartoons, birthday cakes, school pictures.

    It isn’t supposed to be a crash course in real life situations like death, loss, and grief. It isn’t supposed to be learning to navigate the emotions of adults around you, and learning how to regulate your nervous system. And it most definitely isn’t supposed to be swallowing your childhood whole because of it.

    But life doesn’t always ask what age you’re supposed to be.

    Sometimes it just happens. And when you’re that young, you don’t necessarily process what happens.

    You absorb it. You adapt. You keep going.

    And somewhere along the way, I became someone who stopped expecting very much from life. 

    I didn’t have some elaborate vision of who I would be when I grow up, and when we had to write letters to our future self I’d often wonder what the point was.

    I wasn’t sitting around at ten years old thinking about my career, my apartment, my finances, or where I’d eventually live.

    I wasn’t a kid putting a pillow case over my head, nor have I even planned what my wedding would look like. 

    Honestly, I don’t even think I expected to make it that far ahead. 

    And you know what? There was something strangely simple about that. If you don’t expect much from the future, the future can’t disappoint you.

    At some point, it became less about: “What do I want to be?”

    It was more about: “Will I even make it there?”

    That is a very different way to grow up.

    And looking back now, it’s almost wild to realize how young I was when I stopped wanting to exist. 

    I didn’t want to get up in the morning. I didn’t want to do things. I didn’t want to commit to anything.

    I was the girl who would start something and then immediately give it up.

    Put me in an extracurricular activity? I’d leave.

    Give me something to try? I didn’t want to do it.

    Ask me what I wanted to be? I didn’t know.

    Ask me what I wanted to do? I didn’t know.

    Ask me who I wanted to become? I hadn’t even thought about it.

    And I don’t think I understood why. I just knew that I didn’t want anything. Or at least, I thought I didn’t.

    Then I found something I could want.

    Eventually, there was something I became passionate about. And the feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before. Because for the first time, I wasn’t forcing myself to care.

    I cared. I wanted it. I could see myself in it.

    And I think part of the reason I wanted it so badly was because it was familiar.

    It was what I knew. It was what I had been surrounded by. It was the world I understood.

    But if I’m being completely honest with myself now, I think there was something underneath that desire that I didn’t have the maturity to recognize yet.

    I think I believed it would finally make me important.

    Important enough to be seen.

    Important enough to be heard.

    Important enough that people couldn’t talk over me.

    Important enough that I couldn’t be overlooked.

    Important enough that I wouldn’t be overshadowed.

    Important enough that maybe the world would finally have to acknowledge that I existed.

    Because when you’ve spent a significant part of your childhood feeling invisible, recognition can start to look a lot like love.

    Achievement can start to look like worth. Success can start to look like proof.

    Proof that you mattered. Proof that you had become someone. Proof that everything you went through had somehow produced something extraordinary.

    So I built a dream. And I chased it with everything I had.

    And for a long time, I thought: This is it. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is who I’m supposed to become. This is the thing that will finally make all of it mean something.

    I wanted to be in rooms where I couldn’t be ignored. I wanted to be around people who couldn’t talk over me. I wanted to be looked at. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be someone people remembered. Someone people admired.

    Someone people could point to and say,

    “Look what she became.”

    Maybe some of that was ambition. But some of it was a little girl asking the world to finally notice her.

    And I didn’t know the difference.

    The problem with getting exactly what you thought you wanted is the part nobody really prepares you for.

    What happens when you get there? What happens when the dream you spent years chasing actually starts happening? What happens when you’re finally in the rooms?

    Around the people. Around the opportunities. Around the things you once thought would make you feel like you’d finally arrived.

    And instead of feeling fulfilled, you realize: I don’t want this anymore.

    That realization can knock the wind out of you. Because it may be one thing to fail at a dream, but it’s another thing to realize you don’t want it.

    Failure gives you a direction, but doubt can leave you staring at the map wondering where the hell you’re supposed to go next.

    And when everyone around you thinks that thing is your identity, walking away from it can feel like walking away from yourself.

    People ask:

    “Why didn’t you do it?”

    “Why didn’t you continue?”

    “You were so good at that.”

    “You always said this was what you wanted.”

    And the truth is difficult to explain.

    Because how do you tell someone: I finally got close enough to my dream to realize it was everything I didn’t actually want?

    How do you explain that the dream was real? The passion was real. The work was real. The ambition was real. But the reason underneath it was something you didn’t understand yet.

    I wasn’t necessarily chasing my soul’s path. I was chasing significance.

    I was trying to become someone who could never again be ignored.

    And eventually, I had to admit that no amount of recognition could heal the part of me that believed I needed recognition to have value.

    Then came the spiritual awakening.

    After COVID, something in me shifted. I started looking at my life through a completely different lens.

    My awakening gave me language for things I had been feeling without knowing how to articulate them.

    I started learning about dharma. About attachment. About karma. About the difference between action and attachment to the fruits of action.

    About how desire itself isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what we believe that desire will give us.

    And slowly, I started looking back at my dreams differently.

    I realized that maybe the dreams weren’t wrong. The lens was wrong.

    The things I wanted weren’t necessarily bad. The ambition wasn’t bad.

    The desire to create wasn’t bad. The desire to achieve wasn’t bad.

    The desire to be seen wasn’t even something I needed to be ashamed of.

    But I had attached my worth to the outcome.

    I thought:

    If I accomplish this, then I’ll matter.

    If people know me, then I’ll matter.

    If I’m successful enough, then I’ll matter.

    If I become extraordinary enough, then maybe everything I’ve experienced will have been worth something.

    And spirituality forced me to confront something much harder:

    What if I already mattered before I accomplished any of it?

    That question changed everything. Because if I already have inherent value, then achievement can no longer be responsible for proving it.

    And if achievement isn’t responsible for proving my worth, then I am finally free to ask:

    What do I actually want to do?

    Not what will make me impressive. Not what will make people remember me. Not what will make people finally understand what I’m capable of.

    What actually serves me? What serves other people? What feels aligned? 

    What am I here to give?

    That is a much harder question. And I still don’t completely know the answer.

    But I think I’m finally beginning to understand my purpose.

    Maybe my purpose isn’t to become someone everyone knows. Maybe it’s to become someone who makes people feel known.

    There is a difference.

    I spent so much of my life wanting to be understood. Now I think I want to understand people.

    I know what it feels like to feel alone in a room. To say something and feel like nobody heard you. To have something happening inside you and have nowhere safe to put it. To wonder whether anyone actually sees you.

    And maybe that’s why my purpose doesn’t feel as complicated anymore.

    I don’t necessarily know what title belongs on it. I don’t know exactly what career it becomes. I don’t know what form it takes.

    But I know what I want the impact to feel like.

    I don’t want people to feel as alone as I did. I don’t want people to feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them because nobody understood them.

    I want people to know that their stories matter. That their pain doesn’t make them unworthy. That they don’t have to become extraordinary to deserve love. That being seen isn’t something you have to earn.

    Maybe I spent years trying to become a light because I knew exactly what darkness felt like.

    And maybe that is the part of my story that finally makes sense.

    … And then life changed again.

    Because just when I thought I was beginning to understand what meaning meant to me…

    I experienced the greatest loss of my life.

    And suddenly all of those philosophical questions became personal again.

    What does meaning mean when the person who was such a huge part of your world isn’t here to experience the life you’re still trying to build?

    What does it mean to achieve something when the person you desperately want to tell isn’t sitting beside you?

    How do you keep pursuing your dreams when one of the people who made the dream feel meaningful is no longer here?

    I don’t have beautiful answers for all of that. I’m still figuring it out. I think that’s important to say. Because sometimes spirituality gets presented like enlightenment means you’ve stopped hurting.

    It doesn’t.

    Sometimes knowing better doesn’t mean hurting less. Sometimes understanding impermanence doesn’t make loss painless. Sometimes knowing that life is temporary makes you feel the temporary nature of everything even more deeply.

    I’m still figuring out what my life means now. I’m still figuring out what my dreams look like without the person I imagined beside me.

    I keep reminding myself that I don’t need to have that answer yet.

    One thing that has changed in the last year is… I have stopped caring about milestones entirely. 

    Or at least, I stopped letting them define me. I still catch myself sometimes. Of course I do. I’m human.

    Sometimes I still look around. Sometimes I still wonder if I’m where I thought I’d be. Sometimes I still feel that little sting when I realize I’m not following the timeline I once imagined.

    But I don’t worship the timeline anymore.

    Because I’ve learned something the hard way: You can manifest something and still not be the person who can sustain it.

    You can get the house. The relationship. The career. The recognition. The money. The opportunity. The room you’ve always dreamed of entering.

    And still lose yourself inside it.

    I’ve lived enough experiences to understand that getting something and being ready to hold something are two completely different things.

    Sometimes life doesn’t give you the thing because it’s denying you. 

    Sometimes you aren’t ready to sustain what you’re asking for.

    And sometimes the lesson isn’t: “How do I get this?”

    It’s: “Who do I need to become so that when I get this, I don’t lose myself?”

    That changed the way I think about timing.

    Maybe I’m not behind. Maybe I’m becoming.

    Maybe there are parts of me that needed to develop before the life I want could actually feel like mine. And maybe that’s why starting over feels so exhausting.

    But when you start over again, you’re not starting from zero. NO!

    You’re starting with everything you’ve already learned.

    You’re starting with the knowledge of what you don’t want.

    You’re starting with a deeper understanding of yourself.

    You’re starting with scars.

    You’re starting with wisdom you didn’t ask for.

    You’re starting with a version of yourself who knows what it feels like to get what she thought she wanted and realize it wasn’t enough.

    That isn’t nothing. That’s actually a lot.

    The person I thought I’d be by now probably had more answers. She probably knew exactly what she wanted. She probably had a very clean timeline. She probably thought success would feel like arriving somewhere.

    But she wouldn’t have known what I would experience. She wouldn’t have known what would change me. She wouldn’t have known who I would lose. Who I would meet. What I would survive. What I would learn. What I would eventually stop wanting.

    She wouldn’t have known that some dreams would expire. Or that other dreams would take their place. She wouldn’t have known that sometimes you have to build an entire life before you understand what kind of life you actually want.

    And maybe that’s okay. We grieve lives we thought we would have, and then we move forward.

    Because I don’t think I’m supposed to become the woman I imagined when I was younger. She was created from the information she had. She wanted recognition because she knew what it felt like to be overlooked. 

    She wanted achievement because she knew what it felt like to feel insignificant. She wanted importance because she spent so much of her life feeling invisible. She wanted to rise from the ashes because she needed the ashes to mean something.

    And I don’t judge her for that anymore. I understand her.

    But I also don’t need to keep living for her. Because now I know something she didn’t.

    Being seen is not the same as being known. Being admired is not the same as being loved.

    Achievement is not the same as purpose. And becoming important is not the same as becoming fulfilled.

    I don’t need the world to look at me and say, “Look what she became.”

    I just want to know that when I leave this world, I will have made a difference in lives. Hopefully the world.

    But, I want to look at myself and say, “Look who I became.”

    That is enough.

    I’m not behind. I’m finally on my own timeline.

    There are people who know what they want at eighteen. There are people who figure it out at twenty-five.

    There are people who completely reinvent themselves at thirty. There are people who do it at fifty.

    There are people who spend their entire lives becoming. There is no universal sequence. And yet we act like there is.

    Graduate. Career. Relationship. House. Marriage. Kids. Success. Happiness.

    Check. Check. Check.

    As if life is a checklist and we’re all taking the same exam at different speeds.

    But life isn’t a standardized test. There isn’t one correct answer sheet. And I don’t think success can mean the same thing at every age.

    At twenty-two, success might mean proving you can do something.

    At twenty-seven, it might mean realizing you don’t have to prove anything.

    At thirty-something, maybe it means having the courage to admit that the dream you worked so hard for isn’t actually your dream anymore.

    Maybe success is waking up and liking the person you’re waking up as. 

    Maybe it’s having relationships that feel safe.

    Maybe it’s creating something that didn’t exist before you made it.

    Maybe it’s becoming the kind of person who can hold the things you once prayed for without allowing them to become your identity.

    Maybe it’s being a light for someone who is still standing in the darkness you once knew.

    I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with my life. And strangely, I don’t think that scares me the way it used to.

    Because once upon a time, I didn’t even know if I wanted a life.

    Now?

    I want one. I want to live it. I want to create. I want to love. I want to help. I want to understand. I want to build something meaningful. I want to leave something behind that makes someone else feel less alone.

    Maybe that’s the first thing I’ve ever wanted that doesn’t require an audience. And perhaps that’s how I know it’s different.

    The person I thought I’d be by now isn’t a failure. She’s a version of me I imagined before I had lived enough life to know what I actually wanted.

    She was a prediction. Not a promise.

    And I don’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to catch up to a person who never existed.

    I can thank her. I can grieve her. I can understand why she wanted what she wanted. I can honor how badly she needed to be seen.

    And then I can let her go.

    Because I don’t think my life is late. I think it’s still becoming.

    And maybe the greatest plot twist of all is realizing that the life I was chasing was never really the point. The point was becoming someone who could finally see herself clearly enough to choose a different one.

    Maybe I don’t need to become extraordinary. I just need to stay honest.

    Maybe I don’t need everyone to know my name. I just need the people I encounter to feel a little less alone.

    Maybe I don’t need to rise from the ashes so everyone can see how high I flew. Maybe I can simply take what survived the fire and use it to keep someone else warm.

    And maybe that’s the timeline I was looking for all along.

    – nk

  • Terms and Conditions

    I don’t really want to write about what led to that breakup, especially after coming so far past it all.

    And I mean, I can.

    I can talk about how I chose to be in a relationship with someone who was fundamentally wrong for me. I can talk about how I chose to ignore the red flags, even though they were waving right in front of my face. I can talk about how much of myself I lost in a relationship that I was sacrificing and losing so much of myself for.

    I can talk about how many times I blamed myself for things that were never mine to hold. I can tell you how many times I was gaslit into feeling like I was crazy. I can tell you how many times I was told I was “too much” for the things I asked for. I can tell you so much. 

    So, I will. Because it matters. Because the breakup is NOT the point. It was the catalyst.

    I’ll keep the beginning short and simple.

    An anxiously avoidant guy meets an anxiously attached girl, and they fall in love. They decide to build a future and move in together. They live together for two years, and, in that time, they find out things about each other.

    Some good. Some bad. Some ugly. Some beautiful.

    The beautiful is really beautiful. But the ugly is really ugly.

    The anxiously avoidant knows how to escape, and the anxiously attached doesn’t know how to let go or give space.

    The anxiously attached wants to talk. To communicate. To figure things out. But the avoidant walks out. 

    For a few moments? For a couple hours? No.

    For days.

    One day, the avoidant decides to pull away. Again. And the attached can feel it. The attached communicates it. But the avoidant denies it.

    And a month later, the avoidant finally leaves.

    Except I didn’t actually find out he was leaving from him. I found out from a text conversation with his cousin, discussing how he needs to escape from a “serious alcohol problem” I have. 

    The irony was almost cruel. This was something I had already been made to question about myself. I had been convinced that maybe I really did have a problem. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe this was why things were falling apart. 

    It was something that consumed me. One drink? Fine. Two? You’re absolutely wild. Three? You’re a damn alcoholic, you have a problem, and I’m not dealing with it.

    I think my first mistake was allowing someone with a “lightening” tattoo the size of a pea who could only handle Bud Lights in can form too much power and authority.

    But I digress…

    I remember crying in shame of myself while pouring every bottle I had down the drain, from my beautifully curated bar where I enjoyed making Tiffany Mimosas, just to prove to him that I am not something he drove me into identifying as. 

    But there was more… 

    He was going to pack up and leave, and he was NEVER going to tell me. I was just going to walk home one day and find his things gone from our home. 

    Again. 

    He denied it, then admitted it, then started insulting me.

    The problems were my fault. The differences were my fault. The relationship falling apart was my fault.

    Somehow, I was left standing there trying to defend myself against a case I didn’t even know I was on trial for.

    Ugh. I want to preface that this all started because of a couch.

    No, I’m not kidding.

    He really thought it wouldn’t fit. I really knew it would.

    He said I was stubborn, I never listen to anybody, and I act like I am better than everyone.

    I told him I have been decorating our home, alone, for two years.

    Maybe it stung. I meant it to.

    Do not be the kind of person to tell me something isn’t going to work out without finding me a solution. Your intention, at that point, is not to help – it is to criticize.

    But, I think what stung the most, was that the couch fit and it was perfect. 

    Because he stopped talking to me after that…

    Sigh. 

    That relationship made me question everything about myself – in a time where I was going through healing my inner child and wounds, navigating healthier relationships with my parents, trying to understand how to emotionally navigate watching my mom’s health deteriorate, going through difficult internal social/emotional changes whilst dealing with external judgment, ongoing grief from losing one of my closest family member – my mom’s brother, learning I have PCOS (renamed to PMOS), being unemployed and having an 8 month legal battle with unemployment only to not favor me because I “voluntarily left to take care of a family member with a disease”, and FINALLY, came to the final realization that I am repulsed by the entertainment industry and I cannot pretend anymore.

    And that’s a lot in just two years. My mental, emotional, physical, financial, psychological, and spiritual realms/health were all turbulent at the same time.

    He made life difficult when there was already so much pain. There was no possibility of mutual growth because anything against him was met with avoidance and abandonment. When I was with my friends and we were having a great time, he often got mad at me for acting so “out of character”.

    Fine. I stopped. It’s okay, I can practice my spirituality on my free time. But what is free time when you have a full time job and a home/life you’re supposed to co-exist with? Well, with the wrong person, it’s calling them up and asking if there’s chicken in the fridge and they don’t know because they have not opened in a week. They don’t know where the spices are, they don’t know what certain things are called, they use the rice cooker spoon to cook scrambled eggs and then burn both the pot and utensils…

    Fine. I’ll handle it. It’s okay. I can handle the house… but I won’t be in the country for the move to the next apartment. However, I have everything laid out here with instructions on what to pack and how to pack. Can you make sure it’s good? If you need anything call me, or call these people who will come at a drop of a hat to help.

    No. Just going to pack everything in a box, and hope it makes its way. By the way I broke your TV, and I have no idea where half of your clothes and shoes are.

    Eventually, he did leave. We talked the next day and he told me things about myself that I knew were not true, but I agreed with him anyway and asked him to please stay with me while I work on it.

    “I don’t want to watch you try to get better”

    He stayed for two days because he didn’t have anywhere to go, and I was still too nice and still hoping we can work it out. Yes, even after all that.

    My final straw, if it was even possible for me to have one, was when I was given evidence of possible infidelity. That’s a non-negotiable. I had two hours before I had to go to work and, in those two hours, I gathered all his things and threw it out for him to pick up.

    And I did not look back.

    Every single time I think about the incompetence, the blatant disregard, the lies… I just get so upset at the betrayal.

    Betrayal is hard. When someone betrays you, it’s like a knife in your back – as we all know. That pain is deafening because it crushes a reality you had set in your mind about this person, this connection, your relationship. The whirlpool of clouds wither away and you’re left with seeing the ruins behind it. 

    But when you betray yourself? It’s worse. It’s a knife in the front, and the one who put it there may not have been you. But you’re holding it down with your hands. And I felt that too. I felt his knife in my chest, I felt his hands around it. But I felt mine right on top, digging it more and more. That knife may have hurt, but it was the thing that was keeping us together. 

    There’s no coming back from betraying yourself, and you do not want to. Sitting with yourself and understanding where you could have stopped it brings shame to a whole new level.

    I truly believe that the universe will do everything needed to ensure what is not meant for you does not stay. It will make your life so unbearable that you have no choice but to choose yourself.  

    Looking back, I can see how much that relationship taught me about what happens when you spend so much time trying to prove that you are worthy of being chosen, that you forget to ask yourself whether you even want to be chosen by the person standing in front of you.

    Because, at the time, I was screaming to be chosen.

    I was screaming to be chosen by someone/something outside of me. I literally did not choose myself.

    Maybe that is what the journey is really about. Bringing those darker parts of ourselves to the surface. The parts we may have known were there. The parts we may not have even realized were there.

    The journey makes you aware. It forces you to see yourself.

    Because you cannot heal what you cannot see. You cannot work through something you don’t understand, or even know how deeply it is impacting your life.

    And for me, what I had to see was this:

    I was self-sacrificing for a man who kept dimming my light. A man who told me I was the problem whenever I disagreed with him. A man who never wanted to communicate. A man who blamed me for our differences. A man who would leave and not come home for days. No text. No call. Nothing.

    The first time something like that happened, I reached a point where I self-harmed.

    He saw the scar. He didn’t even care. I still chose him.

    I still ignored myself. I still chose him.

    That is the part that is difficult to admit.

    Because there are certain experiences in life that don’t simply break your heart, they introduce you to yourself.

    And sometimes, unfortunately, you have to lose something you desperately wanted before you realize what you were willing to lose in order to keep it.

    For a long time, I thought self-love meant loving yourself completely.

    Having yourself figured out.

    Knowing your worth every single day.

    Being confident. Being healed.

    Having boundaries. Having the perfect routines.

    Making all the right decisions.

    I don’t believe that anymore.

    I think self-love is much less glamorous than that.

    Sometimes self-love is simply deciding that you are not going to abandon yourself today.

    Even when you’re confused. Even when you’re messy. Even when you’re not proud of the way you’ve been coping. Even when you don’t understand yourself.

    Because the truth is, you don’t have to completely understand yourself to love yourself. You don’t have to be completely healed to be worthy of love. You don’t have to have your entire life together. You don’t even have to like every part of yourself.

    You just have to stop treating yourself like someone you are willing to sacrifice.

    Those have to be your Terms and Conditions.

    Non-negotiable.

    And that was something I had to learn the hard way.

    After the breakup, there were periods of my life where I was barely surviving. I was still coming up for air after being drowned so many times, I couldn’t believe I was being pushed back into the water.

    I was financially struggling to bring home a two-person salary in order to afford a roof over my head, and I would just barely make it.

    I was sleeping at odd times and working double shifts, sometimes six days with a side hustle, in order to pay rent. It was insane how I still had nothing left. It felt like a cycle of poverty that was never-ending, despite me having a roof over my head.

    The thought of food was a luxury that I did not always have. The only time I was guaranteed food was on the days I worked. Sometimes, if I could afford a meal on my days off, it would have to be a big quantity – something that would last me two meals. When I need to be hungry, I will get myself hungry. When I cannot eat, I will make myself lose my appetite.

    My routines weren’t okay. My habits weren’t okay. Some of the ways I coped weren’t okay. But at the time, they were what I had. They got me through. I think we are sometimes far too quick to judge the versions of ourselves who had to survive in ways our present selves wouldn’t choose.

    I don’t romanticize those versions of me. But I don’t hate them either. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I thank her.

    I stopped having to fight to keep a relationship together, but I had to start fighting to another battle of survival. 

    I think the hardest takeaway from this phase of life is something I am only now learning to heal. I developed an unhealthy relationship with food that, itself, brought a domino effect of darkness. It worsened my health, suffering with PCOS/PMOS.

    But.. what could I do? This was what my surviving looked like.

    Sigh…

    Let’s take a quick break & a deep breath together, I needed it.

    …

    …

    …

    Great, now let’s move forward.

    Survival doesn’t look like healing. Sometimes it looks like getting through the day. Sometimes it looks like distracting yourself. Sometimes it looks like people-pleasing because keeping everyone happy feels safer than asking yourself what you actually want. And sometimes it looks like choosing someone you already know isn’t right for you.

    That’s the part I had to confront.

    Because there is a very specific kind of pain that comes from choosing something you already know better than.

    It’s different from being blindsided. It’s different from not knowing.

    It’s the pain of your intuition whispering: You know.

    And you answering: I know. But I want this anyway.

    Because you chose it. You have to follow through. You can’t be a quitter. Even when some part of you already knows you should leave.

    That is where karma became very real to me. Not karma as some cosmic punishment system, no. Let’s not take this out of context the same way modern-day spirituality does. 

    Not, “I did something bad, so the universe is going to get me.”

    But karma as consequence. As cause and effect. As the reality that every choice creates an imprint.

    When we repeatedly act against what we know is right for us, against our conscience, against our dharma, we don’t escape the consequence simply because we wanted the outcome badly enough.

    The universe doesn’t necessarily have to punish you. Sometimes you punish yourself by continuing to live in contradiction with what you already know.

    And eventually, reality catches up. That’s what karma can feel like.

    Not revenge.

    Revelation.

    The lesson wasn’t that I should never love the wrong person. The lesson was that once I know someone is wrong for me, continuing to choose them comes at a price.

    And that price isn’t necessarily losing them, the price is losing pieces of yourself.  Your peace. Your confidence. Your voice. Your boundaries. Your ability to recognize yourself.

    And that is a price I am no longer willing to pay. 

    It wasn’t about learning how to leave a relationship. I learned how to stop leaving myself. And in doing that, I learned how to leave when I needed to.

    For years, I thought I was an independent woman. And in many ways, I was. I could handle things myself. I could make decisions myself. I could survive on my own.

    But emotionally? I was something else entirely. I was independently dependent. 

    To be honest, that phrase sounds like a contradiction because it is. If you’ve read The Walking Contradiction, available on the homepage, then you know.

    I had learned how to function independently while still making my emotional existence dependent on other people.

    Their approval. Their presence. Their happiness. Their perception of me. Their love. Their choosing me.

    I could stand on my own two feet while simultaneously needing someone else to tell me that I was worth standing on.

    That’s not independence. That’s independence with an invisible attachment cord.

    And I didn’t recognize it because I had confused self-sufficiency with self-love.

    I knew how to take care of myself. I didn’t necessarily know how to choose myself.

    There is a difference.

    I had to learn how to move from people-pleasing to self-honoring. 

    From codependency to interdependence.

    Because I don’t believe the answer is becoming so independent that you need nobody. That’s not love either.

    We are human beings. We need one another. We are meant to connect. To depend on people sometimes. To be held. To give. To receive.

    The goal isn’t to become someone who needs nothing.

    The goal is to become someone who can need another person without needing to disappear inside them.

    That, to me, is love. And this is where I think I misunderstood self-love.

    Self-love isn’t saying: “I don’t need you.”

    Self-love is saying: “I love you. I need you. I choose you. And I will still remain myself.”

    Because I didn’t want a love that required me to become less of me. I didn’t want a love that required me to shrink. I didn’t want a love that required me to abandon my intuition, my values, my dreams, my voice, my spirituality, my weirdness, my contradictions, or the parts of me I’m still trying to understand.

    I would rather lose everyone else than lose myself again.

    It’s easy to come back from losing someone, no matter how hard that may seem. It’s impossible to come back once you lose yourself, trust me, I am doing the work.

    One thing I knew definitvely though, was that the love of my life could never require me to become a stranger to myself. And if it does? Then it isn’t the love of my life. It’s the lesson of my life.

    There is something deeply spiritual about realizing that.

    In Sanātana Dharma, there is this understanding that beneath all of the identities we create: the partner, the daughter, the friend, the employee, the successful woman, the wounded woman, the woman who has it together, the woman who absolutely does not – we are something deeper.

    The ātman. The soul. The self beneath the roles.

    And perhaps my biggest lesson was realizing how often I had been willing to betray that deeper self in order to preserve an external relationship.

    I was so busy trying to be loved correctly by someone else that I wasn’t loving myself correctly. And that’s the real meaning of loving yourself before you can truly love another person.

    It doesn’t mean you need to become perfectly healed before you are allowed to be loved.

    It doesn’t mean you need to spend five years meditating, journaling, drinking green juice, and becoming some enlightened version of yourself before you’re relationship material.

    Seriously? Thank God.

    It simply means you need enough of a relationship with yourself to know when you’re abandoning yourself.

    Because you can enter love unfinished. You can enter love confused. You can enter love with wounds. You can enter love while still figuring yourself out. You can even enter love without fully understanding who you are. But you cannot sustainably love someone while continuously betraying yourself for them.

    Eventually, the bill comes due. And mine did.

    The breakup was actually my greatest release.

    And that release brought me to a love I could have never experienced from the version of me who was willing to abandon herself just to keep someone else.

    I don’t think the lesson was that I had to lose one person to eventually find another. The lesson was that I had to lose the version of myself who believed love required self-abandonment.

    I went through the pain. I did the work. I came back to self-love. And somewhere along that journey, I became capable of recognizing a love that didn’t require me to leave myself behind.

    The simplest way I can say it is this:

    The path to love is through devotion to self. I don’t believe love is simply an emotion. I believe it is a vibration. Something we live in. Something we become aligned with.

    And when we do the work to become aligned with the kind of love we are seeking, we become capable of recognizing, receiving, and sustaining it when it arrives.

    Because if you want love but you are living from fear, abandonment, self-betrayal, and attachment, you can easily mistake the wrong things for love.

    You can mistake anxiety for passion. You can mistake being needed for being loved. You can mistake someone choosing you temporarily for someone choosing you completely.

    You can mistake surviving a relationship for being fulfilled by one. 

    Until you learn the difference.

    So, how do you find love?

    Simple. You don’t. You find yourself.

    You don’t abandon yourself for love anymore. You don’t betray your knowing for attachment. You don’t confuse being needed with being loved. You don’t confuse surviving with living. And you certainly don’t confuse losing someone with losing yourself.

    Because people can leave. Relationships can end. People can disappoint you. People can misunderstand you. People can choose someone else.

    Life can take things from you that you thought you would have forever.

    But there is one person you are guaranteed to live with for the rest of your life.

    You.

    And that person deserves your devotion, too.

    So, in the greatest search for your soulmate, don’t forget to come home to your soul first. Because your soul was never something you had to find. It was always there.

    Beneath the heartbreak. Beneath the attachment. Beneath the fear.

    Beneath every version of yourself you thought you had to become to be loved.

    You just have to come home to it.

    – nk.