Many years after it happened, one fine day, you will understand how a person can be kind, loving, and generous, yet still be harmful. How “who they were” and “what they did” were so different that it left you confused. Now, you can call them toxic or narcissistic, but were they truly toxic or narcissistic to everybody, or just to you? Was it a bad situation, or bad people?

Since time has passed and the fog has cleared, you now know that no human is entirely good or entirely bad. Humans are made of both. It depends on time and situations, which version of a person shows up. It’s not necessary that if someone is terrible to you, they are terrible to everyone. Humans come in layers, and it’s hard to know a person completely. You can only assume what another person is, and it’s not necessary that the person should be true to your assumptions. That’s why it’s said that who someone is with you matters more than who they are with others.

So those kind, loving, generous people might not have intended to hurt you. They didn’t do it on purpose. They may have believed they were being honest, caring, or real. But their definitions of honesty, care, and being real differed from yours. Manipulation wasn’t honesty. Control wasn’t care. Emotional abuse wasn’t love.

All of this left you in self-doubt. Maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe this is how relationships are. If others don’t have a problem with them, then why me?

And this why me played in your head like a broken record for years. You shrank yourself as much as possible so the trouble felt smaller. You stayed longer than you should have. You tolerated more than you should have. You waited for others to validate your pain, your doubts, but forgot that if it hurts, then it hurts, no validation required.

Now it’s time to clear the confusion. “Who they were” doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is what they did to you, because that’s what stays. That’s the damage you’re left with. And sometimes damage doesn’t look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like emotional exhaustion, walking on eggshells, or slowly losing your sense of self. Maybe what they did wasn’t intentional, but unintentional harm is still harm.

They don’t have to be a terrible person to be terrible to you. And once you understand that, you realise there’s nothing left to stay for. You don’t need to change them. They aren’t evil people; they’re just not right for you. And that’s enough reason to leave. To create distance. To set boundaries. So the world, and you, learn how you deserve to be treated.