Even when I do all the right things, when I set and maintain the boundaries I know I need, I can still slip.

I slip because I wanted them to love me. Because I relive old wounds, time and again — wanting to be chosen, wanting to be loved, wanting to be seen. This time, I wanted them to try. And even though I was just as scared, just as unsure, I believed it was worth the chance.

I opened myself. I was vulnerable. I fell for it.

And I fell back — for a week, for a day, for a spell — into the old, heavy, unhealthy patterns. I see myself doing it. I thought I’d broken the script.

And yet, in the blink of an eye, I’m back in that familiar, hellish cage. But this time, I know. This time, I’m not just a witness to my own relapse — I am, inevitably, an enabler of it.

Did I self-sabotage because I don’t know how to be safe in the quiet? Was it the fear of my own strength that pulled me under? Or did I just let their words in again, mistaking a shadow for a home?

It’s on me. I can see that. And now I have to climb.

But I am not defeated. I have not failed. This is only a reminder — a glimpse of the place I no longer inhabit.

Sometimes, all we can do is dust ourselves off more quickly. Not let the next relapse linger a second longer than this one. Until, eventually, the gravity of that old world loses its hold entirely.

So please, remember to give yourself grace. The same fierce grace you once gave them, over and over.

This time is not the same.