I just walked out of therapy and I feel very unsettled right now. The entire session came down to one thing I really didn’t want to accept.
Some people will hurt you and they genuinely do not care.
They don’t sit with it. They don’t feel the weight. They don’t lose sleep. They don’t replay the moments the way I do. They don’t wonder if they went too far or if they negatively affected a person very deeply.
They hurt you and then they move on… just like that…
Sadly, I’ve seen this pattern play out too many times in my life.
When I was 19, my first love stopped talking to me because his best friend lied and planted doubts in his head to slowly pull us apart. Jealousy disguised as concern, his best friend secretly liked me. And he got away with it. No accountability. No consequences. Just a clean exit while I was left trying to understand how something good could be dismantled so easily. I was heartbroken.
Years later, it looked different but felt the same.
When I was 21, I met a charming and very interesting boy. He was different than the other guys I was used to. He was like a bad boy, but mysterious and fun. Our relationship became toxic down the line.
And after we moved in together, he became obsessed and abusive. It was years of anxiety, control, walking on eggshells. I almost didn’t make it out. And yet, he gets to be untouched by the destruction he caused.
I carry the scars, the anxiety, the hyper-vigilance. He carries nothing.
And then fast forward to today, there was someone I tried so hard to do things differently with. I told myself, no… I’m not going to fall into this trap.
I met someone at a new job. He was everything I could ever want in a man. But the situation he was trying to involve me in was very messy and complicated so I’m not going to go into details, but I had set boundaries right from the start. He kept asking me out and I kept shutting it down.
So I set very clear boundaries. I tried to keep my distance. I was cautious. I did not want to go there.
And eventually, against my better judgment, I became weak and let him in. And when I decided to end things out of sheer guilt. He handled everything so poorly. Avoided responsibility. Deflected. Minimized. And when it came time to own his part, he simply didn’t.
And once again, he walked away intact playing victim, while I was left sitting in therapy trying to make sense of why I keep ending up here.
Different men. Different years. Same outcome.
They move on.
I process.
I think what hurts the most is realizing that I kept waiting for remorse from these people. For awareness. For some moment where they’d finally get it. I kept believing that if I explained myself better or stayed calm enough or understanding enough, something would change.
It doesn’t always.
Some people just never look back. And even harder to accept, some people feel that they don’t need to.
Therapy today made me realize that closure isn’t something I’m going to get from them. There’s no apology coming. No reckoning. No moment where they suddenly feel the weight of what they did.
And I think I’ve been holding onto that hope longer than I should have.
This doesn’t feel empowering yet. It feels heavy. It feels unfair. It feels like swallowing a truth I’ve been avoiding for years.
But maybe this is the point where I stop reopening wounds waiting for someone else to care.
Maybe this is where I stop expecting accountability from people who have shown me, repeatedly, that they don’t have it in them.
I don’t feel healed.
I don’t feel strong.
I just feel awake.
And maybe that has to be enough for today.
Honestly, Vanessa 