I used to lie awake and wonder: if something happened to me, who would even show up? Who would really, honestly, miss me? Out west, I built a life so small and hidden that it felt as if I could disappear and no one would notice. That’s the kind of isolation no one talks about..the kind where you realize you’re not just alone, you’re invisible.

Let me paint a picture of how dark things felt for me there.
I was supposed to be living my “happily ever after,” right there with the so-called love of my life. But instead of thinking about who would show up to my wedding, I was lying in bed at night, wondering who would even bother coming to my funeral. A warning sign that I kept dancing around for almost 9 years.

What made it worse was this:

He convinced me I deserved it.

He made me feel fundamentally unlovable, as if my flaws were so ugly or overwhelming that no one else could possibly stay. He called me “crazy,” “too much,” or “hard to love” and I fucking believed him. I let myself believe he was the only one who could handle me, the only one who understood my sense of humour, the only one who would keep my secrets…even though those same secrets became weapons the moment I pushed back or stood up for myself.

This is what happens when you let one person define your worth:
You shrink.
You become smaller and quieter, hoping they’ll love you if you’re just less of yourself.
You start thinking you need to hold on tighter, because if they leave, it’s proof you really are as unlovable as you feel.
What I finally figured out is that nobody deserves to live in that kind of silence.
Nobody deserves to feel their only value is in the eyes of someone who breaks them down just to keep them close.

The more I tried to build a life outside of him, the more he’d try to sabotage it. If he saw me reaching for friendship, he’d create drama or cause embarrassment. Make comments about them or how they treated me until I started to push them away. Eventually, I stopped trying. I convinced myself nobody could truly know me…and if they did, they’d just leave too.

The worst part? I started believing my friendships were optional. Disposable. I thought I could drop everyone for a relationship and pick things up later, no harm done. I was wrong. That’s a brutal kind of loneliness…to be in a room full of people and know not one of them would move mountains for you, because you never bothered to show up for them when it mattered. To busy trying to make a man finally love me, just so I could feel whole.

When we moved to Ontario, everything shifted. This was his home turf… he seemed more comfortable here, he had his circle, and suddenly he loosened his grip on me. For the first time in years, I was free to be a person again. People welcomed me, and I started to find my own place in this world again.

Photography changed everything. The camera became a bridge to connection and belonging. I started seeing women for who they really were raw, vulnerable, honest. And in the process, they started seeing me. My camera pulled me out of hiding and brought the right women into my life…literally into the wreckage with me.

I still remember meeting a friend at a shoot: our first time together, we broke into an abandoned building to make art. Two strangers, both a little broken, who instantly saw something familiar and thought, “Yeah, that’s my person.”

That’s how I met most of my real friends here. Not at parties or through small talk, but in places where we were both a mess, both showing our true selves and refusing to hide it. We built friendships on raw honesty, shared stories, and art that cracked us open. My friends know how deep I run and how hard I love, because I let them see it. I’ve never had to edit myself with them. That’s the thing about women..if you let them, they’ll hold your whole soul, no questions asked.

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t always a “girls’ girl.” I used to side-eye other women, too insecure and jealous, assuming they wouldn’t want me in their circle anyway. I thought women were competition, not connection. I never realized how much I was robbing myself by keeping my distance and staying small.

But everything changed when I let women in. Because at the end of the day, it’s your friends who show up..sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes with a moving truck, sometimes with wine and the kind of laughter that makes you forget how heavy life gets. It’s the inside jokes, the late-night talks, the relentless honesty, and the ride-or-die energy that remind you who you are when everything else falls apart. It’s the girls who love your children like their own and would go to war for you if you ever asked them. It’s the women who defend your fucking name when you aren’t even in the room.

That kind of love? It outlasts any man, any heartbreak, any season of your life.

Those memories and connections are what you’ll hold onto when everything else changes.

Choose your friends. Nourish those bonds. Because in the end, that’s the good stuff…the real story. The kind of love that actually goes the distance.

Real Ones Only …Lessons from Losing Myself, Finding My Girls, and Starting Over

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

Collateral Damage..When Moving On Becomes Warfare