The Void

People think the hardest part of leaving an abusive relationship is the leaving. They imagine the bags by the door, the trembling hands, the final step over the threshold. But the truth is, leaving is the easy part. What comes after, that is where the real terror lives.

I don’t blame anyone for not knowing how to support a survivor. Domestic violence is its own language, and not many people speak it. Still, when you finally get out, you enter a world full of unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar rules, unfamiliar dangers. And that uncertainty is scarier than a violent partner ever was.

A violent partner, after all, is consistent. Their chaos is predictable. You learn the patterns, memorize the triggers, anticipate the storms before you even hear the thunder. You’re always on your toes, yet somehow you know exactly what to expect. That strange sense of safety, twisted as it may seem, that comes from the certainty inside the chaos.

But when you leave, you lose the pattern. Suddenly every new person carries the possibility of violence, manipulation, or something even worse. No one talks about that fear: the fear of walking away from something terrible only to end up somewhere you never imagined, somewhere darker.

And that’s exactly what happened to me.

I left an eight‑year marriage where the bruises eventually faded but the emotional damage did not. I learned to over-function, to swallow every part of myself he didn’t approve of until I could barely breathe. And when I finally left, I thought I was free.

But instead, I fell into something far worse.

The next relationship took more from me than the first ever did. It was so controlling, so consuming, that I am still missing teeth from the violence. And why? Because I wanted attention. Because I wanted someone—anyone—to love me. I traded my values, my safety, my sense of self, all for the illusion of love.

But what I was chasing wasn’t love. It was the desperate desire to be seen, to be important to someone, to fill the yawning emptiness inside me. I didn’t realize that the void I was trying to fill was made of all the pieces of myself I had buried: my pain, my fear, my unmet needs, my own darkness. The more I ran from it, the bigger it grew.

Eventually that void consumed me. And when it did, and when there was nothing left but that old, familiar feeling of being unlovable, I survived. I was still there. Beneath all the wreckage, I remained. The void did not swallow me whole; it merely stripped away all my excuses.

When I finally stared into that pit, I realized the pit was just me staring back.

All those reasons I told myself I wasn’t worthy of love evaporated one by one until none were left. The truth I uncovered was simple: there is no such thing as an unlovable person, there is only love. Some people may be harder to love, yes. Some may be deeply hurt, deeply guarded, deeply wounded. But no one is impossible.

Now it’s easier to live for the reasons I am lovable, for the values I once so easily surrendered. Those are the things I can rise to, reach for, build myself upon.

Once you face your void, it loses its power. Once it consumes you and you survive, the fear of being consumed again disappears. You’re left with this strange sense of absurdity, like you’ve stumbled through a cruel joke. You wonder why you didn’t figure it out sooner. Why everything had to fall apart for you to come back to the person you were at the very beginning, just with new eyes.

Sometimes I wonder what void I’ll face next, and how laughable this version of myself will seem to the person I have yet to become. The voice that answers is always the same—the voice that takes life too seriously, that thinks my worth lies in what I can do for others, in how many people I can pull out of their darkness.

But that voice is now laughable. It was never about saving anyone. It was never about being needed or wanted or valued for the help I could give.

It was always about the climb.

About finding the people who are willing to stare into their own abyss and rise anyway. About the connection between climbers. About becoming, not seeking, the love I once believed I had to earn.

Loving myself has never been about embracing the “unlovable” parts. It has always been about facing the moments when I abandoned myself for someone else and choosing differently choosing love.

I was always lovable. I just had to stand in the darkness long enough to see it.