Happy Birthday, Melissa: To The Girl I Had To Outgrow

I used to believe love meant never being alone.

At 25, my world revolved around a man. He was the sun, and I was just some reckless planet burning up, trying desperately to keep him close. I thought I would die without him. Not in a poetic way, but in the desperate way a drowning person needs air. He was my everything because I believed I was nothing without him.

“Ride or die” just meant I was the only one riding, and the only one dying.

I gave him everything. My time, energy, body, and sanity… hoping that if I could just be enough, he’d finally choose me the way I was choosing him. I played the part of the perfect wife before I ever became one: I cleaned, I cooked, I tried to fuck the  emptiness away, and I lost myself in the process.

From the outside, it looked like commitment. But all I really learned was how to disappear. I thought love was about giving until you were empty. I thought being needed was the same as being loved. I thought making myself small would somehow heal him and make him stay.

But he didn’t. I didn’t either. I didn’t have friends. I hated my body, even though I was in the best shape of my life. I spent so much time seeking his approval, I never learned how to approve of myself. I showed up for him in every way I couldn’t show up for myself. My worth lived and died by how happy I could make him.

We challenged each other, but not in the ways people like to brag about on Instagram. It was toxic, wild, and just a little bit addictive…the kind of high that always ends in a crash. Looking back, I know it wasn’t real love. It was a trauma bond. But at 25, it was the only love I’d ever known.

I was 31, with two babies, staring down the barrel of another year spent crying on the kitchen floor. Somewhere in the middle of that mess, I realized there was no way this could be my life…not for them. I didn’t run for me, not yet. I ran for my boys. I ran so they could see their mother happy, alive, unafraid to just show who she really was.

Learning to choose myself came later and much slower. There’s no switch you flip; you patch the holes, piece by piece, until one day you realize you’re not bleeding out anymore.

Now I’m 35. I’m alone. And somehow, that feels safer than the chaos I once called “home.” I don’t need anyone to choose me, because I finally know how to choose myself. I make my own dinner. I hold my own hand. I dance in my own fucking kitchen, because it’s MINE.

At 25, I was convinced I couldn’t survive on my own.

I was never weak…I just learned to see myself that way… I didn’t trust myself yet.

I was never unlovable… I just spent too long trying to earn love to notice I already had it within me.

I AM LOVE.

Life isn’t perfect at 35. But it’s mine. And it keeps getting better… not because it’s easier, but because I am stronger. Because I’m no longer asking to be picked. I am finally, unapologetically, mine.

My boys don’t just have a mother. They have a front-row seat to a woman who refuses to settle, who shows up for herself, even when it’s hard, even when she stumbles. If I teach them anything, let it be that you never have to bleed to be loved. You never have to disappear to belong.

I want more for myself, and I’m not sorry for it. I want peace that isn’t boring, love that isn’t a transaction, a life that isn’t just survival. I want to wake up every day and choose myself over fear, over comfort, over the old stories that told me I wasn’t enough.

I want to stop apologizing for being too much. I’d rather be too much than not enough for myself.

So if you’re watching, hoping I’ll go back to the girl who needed saving… don’t hold your breath. I’m not her. I’m the woman who saves herself and then teaches the next girl how to do the same.

Here’s to 35!!!

To falling, to rising, to choosing myself, even when it’s messy.

I’m not just growing older. I’m getting bolder. And that’s a version of me I don’t think anybody’s ready for.

Happy birthday to the woman who became her own fucking home.

Everything is Aligned,

Mel